This is so awesome!! I am loving it!!! and there is a good chance my landline will soon be long gone!

Hartland has always been a Dead Zone even before cell phones were invented. Nothing has changed nothing will change it will always be a Dead Zone.

Hojohn said. “Some of the people who work here could not leave their desk because they would have been unreachable while out in the mill.”

Hey - pop down to Radio Shack. They have these neat things called "cordless phones" that work really well. They're pretty new - only been around 20 years or so....

However did we survive before cell phones?

Now if only they could get the Sullivan tower up. I can get signal on the porch but not in the house. I check my cell frequently, yet I need to go to Ellsworth to really find out if I have customers trying to contact me.

Good cell phone service in downtown Hartland will be a big boon to the druggies in Hartland and their dealers. Not much of anything else in downtown Hartland.

Agreed. It will always be a Dead Zone.

LONG Live Landlines,down with cell phones !!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Think I`m the only one left,without cellphone????

That is good for Hartland. Most will agree that cell phone providers in some instances are charging say, $ 50.00 per month for service, but, the subscriber gets no service, they have to drive to a certain spot to get reception. Never underestood how they can get away with this ripoff charging for service, yet providing no service ? "Oh, we´re working on that, installing a tower, first, we need to get FCC approval, blah, blah, blah."

One good thing for the area, now the Meth Junkies can call the Meth Labs to find out when the next batch of Meth will be cooked. Especially if the Drug Dealer has a mobile lab.

Well I live in Hartland and I have verizon and I can see the tower from my home, and guess what?? I DON'T RECEIVE ANY SERVICE STILL...I don't understand it all, been to verizon and they don't know....looks like I may be switching to another server......

Well thats nice for them. Now if only the state would force a company to put a cell tower on Deer Isle or Stonington. The Blue Hill tower and Sedgewick one, if its on, doesn't cover over 80% of the island and then only with about 1 bar most of the time. Heck the company that added the tower would make loads of money in the summers from the summer people who come in to the Penobscot Bay area and more locals would get cell phones too. Tired of only being able to use my cell on the mainland.

Praying for more then 1 bar.

Tracfone still does not accept the tower. I have a newer phone from them, I live right in the middle of town and don't get any service at all! What's the point of putting a tower up and not making sure all companies accept it!

There are still some in and out sections for T-Mobile in bangor.

Perhaps Hojohn can use his cell phone to call back some of the employees that he laid off a few months ago.....oh thats right a major layoff at the Tannery as not news...and the fact that the new technology and plant they promised a few years back and splashed all of the news was never started...that wasn't news either. What is news is that he can talk on his cell phone! Maybe he should be calling and getting some orders and put hard workers back to work.

Expanding on SteveP's comment: Not only would a cordless phone be an option, but paging coverage DOES extend to Hartland. Not 2-way, certainly, but you could at least leave your desk and receive calls! However did we survive before cell phones, indeed???

Dave Worster, Com-Nav Inc. (PAGING PROVIDER!) 989-5600 / 800-989-6145

Except for the CDMA tracfone. If you use verizon. Dial *228 choose option 2, this should update you roaming capability. For prepaid verizon mvnos dial *22891 first, if that does not work dial *228 choose option 2. For verizon prepaid formerly inpulse , dial *228 choose option 2. If your phone does not reboot on its own, turn off phone and turn it back on.

It is 2010 and Maine is still in the Prehistoric period of man.

I am pleased with the service. thank you US Cellular. By the way, my neighbor has a trac phone and gets service.

said commentary about Hartland and drugs and tannery laying off........sad we are known for that.

Couple of things.

1> Verizon has to add the new Hartland site to their roaming list and will pay for their customers to roam on the site. There's some sites that Verizon automatically excludes. Either way, it will take time, if they add it to the roaming list. It's possible USCC hasn't added roaming support yet for 3rd party carriers too. This is their right to not allow roaming, contrary to belief in comments here.

2> Some Tracfone customers are Verizon, some are US Cellular, others are AT&T or TMobile. US Cellular Tracfone customers should benefit immediately, but Verizon customers will have to wait until #1 happens. Basically Tracfone is buying service from a local cell carrier and reselling it to you. Tracfone may be able to tell you who is providing your service through them if you call them.

3> AT&T/Tmobile customers will never benefit from this coverage since they use a different technology. This includes GSM Tracfone customers who are on AT&T or T-mobile. If your phone has a plastic chip (SIM CARD) under the battery, you're one of these customers. Get a different phone/service if you have problems namely a phone that supports CDMA technology.

4> Good news! - The new US Cellular site is EVDO (3G). I was just there the other day working the other day. There are no roaming agreements for 3G data access between US Cellular and anyone, meaning roamers will get slower data speeds at this time.

5> Blue Hill / Deer Isle coverage, and other places in Coastal/Downeast Maine are largely garbage because of NIMBYs that do not want towers in their view. It's unfortunately sad but true. If someone's willing to provide land for a tower, US Cellular (or even GTP Tower) are usually willing to come in, especially if the site is a great location. I was in Bucks Harbor, Sargentville, Brooksville, East Blue Hill, etc. last week and my phone worked well outdoors on US Cellular for the most part, but indoor coverage could've been better. I definitely understand how bad coverage can be down there.

IMHO, The only carriers really worth owning north of Augusta are Verizon and US Cellular (or carriers that resell them). US Cellular the better of the two in most cases. Customers with AT&T or T-mobile will always find their coverage outside of the major arteries is 'lacking', with exception to roaming on Verizon (former Unicel's) roaming network, which is stagnant. Sprint is also a bad idea because they have a 50% on-network rule and they only cover up I95 to Bangor and down to Ellsworth on 1A.

I am very glad about US Cellular's commitment to Maine and can't wait until they deploy 4G here sometime in the future.

Hope this helps.

T Mobile coverage in MaIne is dismal. After buying a t-mobil tracphone for a week long camping trip and not getting any reception, I called T-Mobile and was told that they don't have any towers in this part of the State, which begs the question: then why do you sell phones in this part of the State.

Maybe you can answer something for me drdroo. When I type in zip code (04666) into all the wireless sites, verizon, t-moblie, sprint, and att, the only one that says service is available here is att. And of course, US cellullar. I look at the coverage maps and it shows my zip code within service area on verizon, but yet the site says no service here. Does that mean I will be roaming all the time if i try to go with verizon? Or should I try att or US cellular? Looking for advice. Thanks.

@whatmeworry -

AT&T has some towers and 800mhz licenses for Washington and Hancock County. I've actually driven up US 1 and from ME 9 to US1 (via Harrington, etc.) and the coverage of AT&T is pretty bad off in reality. I'd say their maps are wishful thinking. They do have coverage, but still not as good as US Cellular by any means, especially if you leave one of these arteries.

Verizon doesn't have a 50% on-network rule. If you signed up for Verizon, you would be a US Cellular roamer while in that area and a Verizon customer in the other counties. Also note that if you wanted to use any sort of data services (streaming media, etc.) on your phone, you would be restricted to slower speeds.

If it were me, I'd be a US Cellular customer directly instead of by proxy. US Cellular has free incoming messages/calls on pretty much all of their plans and 7pm nights on most of them. It's worthwhile to check out their site at uscc.com instead of through these 'comparator' engines too. Oftentimes those comparison sites either do not include US Cellular or have incorrect data.

@Bangorian -

I am a former T-mobile customer but they ejected me off their network for roaming too much on Unicel's network.

Your condition could be that T-mobile Tracfones do not allow roaming on other GSM networks (like Unicel's former network), Unicel's coverage has been turned down dramatically (because Verizon owns it and put their own gear up), or the area was never covered in the first place. Tracfone is a bit of a bizarre situation.

However, This isn't really a fault of T-mobile or Tracfone in this case. The prepaid solutions are sold in bulk to various stores that sell them. It's not like buying from a cellular carrier. 7-11, Walmart, Target, etc. carry the same solutions everywhere and aren't trained in the local coverage of a given area. With that said, I believe a map of coverage is on the packaging and the GSM (T-mobile/AT&T) models have a different plan offering than the CDMA based ones. The CDMA map should be visibly 'fuller' across the country.

T-mobile doesn't have any retail stores in Maine at all. They rely on third party dealers (Cellphones n More, amongst others) to sell their service. If you're going to stay within Bangor, or within Skowhegan, it may not be a bad deal. However, their coverage is pretty much Up I95 from Augusta to Old Town, down 1A to Ellsworth-ish, and they cover Skowhegan/Madison area to Waterville. Definitely not an earthshattering coverage area. Since T-mobile is a strictly 1900mhz carrier, they basically have to put two cell sites for every 1 of a Verizon or US Cellular to cover the same area. It's not exactly flat in the Northern half of the state.

If T-mobile or AT&T cared about serving this region, they would've made a bid for Unicel. Unicel was trying to sell and was quite open about it. It wasn't like Verizon just made an offer.

drdroo, has it figured out!

When I visited Maine a few years ago, my Verizon phone roamed on US Cellular of course (before Verizon had native service north of portland/freeport) and to be honest, I was quite surprised how good the coverage was considering it was Maine. Still not a great as the Verizon network where I live, but very usable.

One nice thing about Verizon coming to Maine, it forced US Cellular to get off their duff and offer 3g service, they didn't need to offer it before because neither Unicel, or the very limited T-Mobile service offered it. But when Verizon covered pretty much all of their service area with it, US Cellular had to follow.

It is nice to see that US Cellular is still playing nice and offering roaming for Verizon customers and vice versa. I am sure that this will provide an even better experience when I visit next summer.

@MikeinNC -

I do think you may be right about Verizon coming in being a catalyst to upgrade the Northeast market. However, the Northeast market has always been a big deal to USCC and ultimately I think their 3G intentions were established but they were waiting until it was cost effective to do so. I read online that they received a pretty significant discount on their 3G hardware. There are still some sites in Maine that were not upgraded, but I don't worry about 3G in East Corinth as much as I would in some other places. USCC has vowed not to wait so long for 4G and they have 700mhz licenses for the entire state, as does Verizon.

Interestingly, AT&T only bought 700mhz licenses to overlay their existing 2G 850mhz assets (south of Augusta and Hancock/Washington counties). This screams to me that they're not interested in covering the state, just their native markets, which are former Vanguard Cellular One (later ATTWS, Cingular) assets.

T-mobile has 1700/2100 pairs, but no 700mhz licenses. Sprint is doing WIMAX in 2ghz and has no 700mhz licenses. However, Dish Network's parent company has 700mhz licenses, no idea what they're doing with them.

Right now Verizon roams 1X on USCC and USCC roams 1X on Verizon and Sprint. My understanding is this will change. Since I just bought an aircard for USCC (It will be in in a few days from eBay), I look forward to this in Mass when I'm down there for the day. USCC's 5GB data plan is 50$, vs 60 from everyone else.

Interesting situation in cellular here, for sure.

I've stuck with T-Mob in Maine simply because I travel a lot and need a phone that works elsewhere in the world i.e. GSM. What are the options from the other carriers? Mind you, T-Mob works well enough mid-coast and down (on the old Unicel) so I am not really hurting.

@SteveP - Verizon has world phones that support a SIM for overseas travel. I believe US Cellular, too, offers the Blackberry World 8830, at the very least, which supports GSM overseas.

As for within North America, any carrier will work, as well as on some common tourist island destinations and cruise ships.

Thanks drdroo!

@SteveP -

No problem. Just so you know, the 4G standard is LTE for basically all of these companies (except Sprint, which is using WIMAX). This should HOPEFULLY make it a little more consistent like the rest of the world, where carriers will use similar handsets and could potentially roam on each others networks.

It will be some time coming, but I believe Verizon and USCC have both upgraded parts of their networks to make such an upgrade easier. I'm just glad Verizon didn't 'clean USCC's clock' like some suggested would happen when they first acquired Unicel. USCC's stores always seem extremely busy.

Here in Raleigh NC, sprint has covered the area with 4g WIMAX. There are also other companies reselling the WIMAX, you can get it from Sprint, Clear, and Time Warner Cable (as their "mobile broadband service"). The Service is pretty fast too. They are offering 4g with speeds up to 6mbps, which competes favorably with Att DSL service (up to 6mbps) and Time Warner Cable Roadrunner (768mbps, 1.5 mbps, 7.0mbps, and 10mbps), but not with Att Uverse which I have that tops out at 18mbps and soon will be available up to 32mbps. I currently have Uverse 18mbps, and IPTV service.

I am anxious to see all of the cell companies roll out 4g service, whatever variety, the increased competition for high speed broadband service will hopefully drive down prices or at least keep them stable. I have a feeling that once Att, Verizon and T-Moble have their 4g up and running, they will be after the at home internet service customers since they will have the capacity and speed to compete, luckily we have more than ample backbone network to go around.

@MikeinNC - I see things a little differently. I think it's quite possible the 4G carriers (sans Clear) will want to continue with metered service and largely ignoring the home customers. Wireless is a pretty finite commodity and I definitely don't think the cell carriers will be offering an 'unlimited' service. It's a little different with Clear because it's their core business, but the cell carriers are more interested in predictable usage. The word 'unlimited' is a scary place for a limited medium. :)

you just might be correct sir! Of the companies selling Sprint's WIMAX signal, only clear offers unlimited service, Time Warner and Sprint have very low caps at high prices with this service.

@MikeinNC - Clear also has a * next to Unlimited on their website. The asterisk isn't really defined, short of reference to 'Terms and Conditions'. It doesn't define a specific amount of 'unlimited' in the T&C, but I don't like asterisks attached to words like that.

Comcast is capping customers and TW tried to cap them. Maine is TW country too (though I have Great works ADSL2+ here). It could become the norm... scary.

@ drdroo-Yeah I have read about comcast's cap, bummer. I think just about everyone now that that stipulation in their terms and conditions, I hope that capping doesn't become widespread, we use quite a bit of bandwidth with a computer dedicated to the TV.

I am convinced that TWC was throttling my connection. About an hour into any netflix movie, I would get the message that my connection had slowed and it would buffer for 10 or 15 minutes before continuing. Haven't had this issue yet with UVerse. Actually the Uverse VDSL2 is very consistent as far as speed goes, rock solid for both TV and internet.

@MikeinNC - Unfortunately the current government is largely against smart packet shaping to reduce speed of certain types of traffic. I'd prefer the reduction in speed of some types of traffic instead of bandwidth caps (not blocks but just rate reduction during peaks). However, if the government has their way, the only way to reduce overuse by the upper 10% of customers would be implementing hard caps.

I think this is why we don't see unlimited aircard service on the cell carriers too. They've learned from the other ISPs.

VDSL2 is all well and good but I still feel that AT&T should've just run the fiber directly into the home instead of a nearby pedestal. VDSL2 won't be getting faster and by the looks of it AT&T has already hit the ceiling with their existing product. I don't expect to see more TV streams at a time. I guess they could do bonded VDSL2 ports, but you will run out of places to connect customers quickly by doing that (which is why the ADSL companies try to avoid it).

@ drdroo- I am currently at 2 hd streams and 2 sd streams. From what I have read, they have a 3rd HD stream available in some markets (3 hd 1sd). VDSL2 still has room to grow from what I have read. I agree that At&t should have run fiber directly to the home, that would have been the best, like Verizon has done in their Fios markets. Luckily I am quite close to my VRAD so I will likely be able to take advantage of any increase in bandwidth offerings.

@MikeinNC - My bigger concern is that copper will still have limits and interference that fiber won't. It's just two different methods of doing things though, not sure which is right. As far as I'm concerned, installing fiber to the premise once seems like a more futureproof solution than installing fiber to a pedestal and then using copper.

I'd be interested to know what the cost savings of deployment was in doing it the way UVerse did.

@drdroo- I imagine that the cost savings was huge. I too wish that they would have gone fiber to the premises. Uverse is an awesome service so far for me.

It would be nice to see the cable companies get their act together and embrace technology like Uverse has. The Uverse DVR is light years ahead of TWC's. The internet speeds are rock solid, not so with TWC, I think that is because of the way the internet is delivered compared to DSL, I think that TWC had stretched itself too thin in my neighborhood, and when use got heavy speed went down the toilet.

I liked my internet service with TWC until a couple of years ago, I think that when more and more bandwidth intensive applications became the norm, the weaknesses of TWC's internet became apparent. I know that they can keep up with the need, but felt that they didn't need to because their advertised speeds were untouchable at the time, now things are starting to change and TWC better get their act together or they could see some trouble down the road.