Cell Service In Aroostook (Caribou, Houlton: house, to buy, living)

[FNolan]

I was wondering how the cell service is in the county. My wife is there now and says that service is good but she's only been mainly in town, little outside of town. We use AT&T, joined when it was Cingular. Does anyone here use them up there and are you satisfied ? I'm thinking of springing for an iPhone since I already have an iPod, cellphone and GPS device. Figure if I can combine them all into one package it might be worth the $200. Shouldn't cost me much more a month then regular service since I don't use the internet now with my phone, I see no reason to use it with the iPhone. Also we plane on spending a fair bit of time exploring the nature Maine has to offer, does cell service work at say Baxter Park or other points of interest that has small populations ?

Any thoughts ?

Thanks in advance.

[NJ2ME]

Originally Posted by FNolan

does cell service work at say Baxter Park or other points of interest that has small populations ?

Any thoughts ?

Thanks in advance.

Can't reply about the rest of your post about the county, however me and my family just spent a day in Baxter Park, and absolutely no cell service was there (at least for any of our phones). By the time you drive down the long road on the way to Baxter, you lose all telephone poles, we lost GPS service, then once in baxter you have to go in even deeper once in the park away from everything. I saw that they had a satelite right at the enterence of the park probably for them to have some sort of service, but they also ask as your coming into the park, how long you plan to stay and an emergency contact number for you for someone that is not with you. We had to check out on our way out so they knew we left so that if by nightfall we were not back, they'd know to come find us since we said we were only staying for the day. Especially since our phones would not work.

BTW, we are now verizon. Our first trip to Maine, I was cingular/ATT (right after they changed) and my husband was verizon... his signal was always better so I changed to verizon, but now our last trip up there neither of our phones worked at our house in Lowell (near Lincoln), however they worked once we were 1/4 mile down the road and pretty much everywhere we drove. (just not at our house! - I had to drive down the street to make a call!)

[Bydand]

It really depends on where you are at in the County. I heard Verizon bought out one of the local cell providers and have set up new 3G towers in the more populated areas of Aroostook. Up and down the main drag (US 1) service is fairly good with only a few small dead areas. Washburn is a black hole when it comes to cell service, some areas get service, while a block away, zero bars. I have used US Cellular and Unicel (Who I think was the one bought out by Verizon) in the Caribou/PI area and liked Unicel better. Up until recently they were the only two providers there. Your best bet is to go into your providers store and have one of the workers pull up an up to date coverage map of where you plan on living. Here is the AT&T coverage map site, but I don't know how up to date it is. AT&T Coverage Viewer It shows the only coverage in Aroostook County as being with a partner and not their own towers. Make sure whatever plan you are on, or end up with covers Canadian towers at no extra cost. A lot of the time you make calls through Canadian towers along the border up there.

[kellysmith]

Verizon did purchase Unicel in the area. T-Mobile and Verizon are the best two providers in the County in my eyes. My personal cell is T-Mobile and work phone is Verizon. Both have equal coverage. I do believe Verizon hits off the Canadian towers more however if you are near the border. You will get charged roaming when that happens even though you have nationwide roaming...Roger's wireless is the Canadian company. That's annoying, but you can set your phone to not hit the Canadian towers if the cost is an issue. We had AT&T for work phones up until last summer and they had coverage off the other networks, but experienced more dropped calls. I think that's because it's not their network that they are on. I don't remember the last time I had a dropped call with either T-Mobile or Verizon, and at least along Rt 1 there is continous coverage.

[fxtrader]

I have Cingular for personal and Verizon for work. Verizon works great for most areas but Cingular is very spotty. If I lived in the area Cingular would not cut it, but they have gotten better the last couple of years. This is for Houlton south. I haven't been above Houlton in a while so I am not sure about the service up country.

[FNolan]

Thanks for the info everyone. Looks like AT&T/Cingular is one of the better choices up there. So I'll probably stick with them. My bills don't show any roaming so it's apparent that they don't use the Canadian towers. I think I'll wait until I get there to buy another phone whether G3 or otherwise.

[Maineah]

Bydand is right about service in The County. Along route one it's fine, off the beaten path it's spotty.
When we go bird hunting in the western part of The County we found a place we can drive to the top of a hill and call through Canadian towers. Roaming charges are expensive so make short calls!