Comments on: Verizon’s Unicel purchase met with resistance

By: Mary

Mary — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:13:48 +0000

Let’s not forget the cost of plans. Unicel has the most decent plans compared to any carrier in the area. For instance, I have a national plan with 600 minutes; nights/weekends start @ 6; unlimited incoming calls/text/unicel2unicel for $60. The unlimited data pack (allows me to use my phone as a modem) $15 compared to verizon $40

Right now I pay $75~80; I expect a comparable plan will cost $200 with verizon

That’s quite a difference. Not to mention Unicel offers a lifeline discout to anyone recieving state aid (i.e. food stamps, medicaid). In maine that equates to $13.50 off your bill per month. It would be one thing if we had good jobs around here. But our economy doesn’t fully support verizon’s plans. There are a lot of people who are not going to be happy. I called unicel and they gave me the run around, stating that it would be at least until feb 09 before anything happened. So I called verizon. After being transfered 3 times the lady put me on hold, came back and started acting like my long lost friend. She told me about how she thinks it will be OK, They should honour our contracts but I should call Unicel corporate headquarters. She kept saying “you take care, I hope I get to talk to you again, etc.” So that makes me feel even worse. Basically her supervisor told her to suck up to me to make up for the $200 I’m going to have to pay soon. Not good.

By: Tina

Tina — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:16:45 +0000

The deal is now done. We got our letter from Unicel yesterday. GSM is out; those of us who travel abroad will need to own two phones, one for the USA and one for the rest of the world. The GSM towers will be maintained, but only for revenue from roaming charges from GSM customers like ATT and T-Mobile, not for the use of Verizon customers. Recently, T-Mobile dropped all their customers in our area of Maine forcing those customers to find another carrier. Most went to Unicel so they could keep their GSM phone. Oh well.

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:58:54 +0000

Verizon is horrible.

By: Peter B

Peter B — Mon, 26 May 2008 03:28:19 +0000

What is written is not only dead wrong, it is dangerous.

1) Verizon’s technology is CDMA which is an older technology. The are approximately 500 million CDMA customers in the world. Unicel’s technology is GSM which is, newer, worldwide technology and there are approximately 3 BILLION GSM users world wide. Thus, a Unicel phone could work in France, a German phone in VT, but a Verizon phone in Europe or most of the rest of the world (see wikipedia.org for details).

Secondly, as Unicel owns and runs the GSM towers in VT and Maine (where I am), when Verizon turns those off and turns on their CDMA transceivers, visitors with GSM phones from ATT and T-Mobile and from the rest of the world will have a very hard time getting a signal.

This switch over will be good for getting people to buy Verizon’s CDMA phone’s, bad for tourism, bad for .

By: Miccal

Miccal — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:04:02 +0000

Unicel has coverage in most areas of Vermont and has been working hard at getting coverage in the most remote corners of the state, Verizon’s coverage is spotty at best and is more expensive.

By: Verizon trying to appease Vermonters | Prepaid Reviews

Verizon trying to appease Vermonters | Prepaid Reviews — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:02:11 +0000

[...] to the site, you may want to subscribe to the the feed.As we’ve mentioned, Verizon’s purchase of Unicel isn’t going over too well up in Vermont. Senator Bernie Sanders has been the most vocal, [...]

By: Christopher

Christopher — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 21:24:58 +0000

RCC owns Unicel. Not Ramcell.