Every cell phone carrier has roaming agreements, whether you have a huge network like Verizon or a small, regional one like U.S. Cellular. This is so customers can travel around the country and not be denied service. Sometimes, these roaming rates are far higher than normal rates. What’s worse, many times features like your Mobile Web and GPS are disabled when outside of the network’s primary calling area. This is quite problematic for people who travel, since they oftentimes rely on GPS. Alltel has eased some of those concerns, as they now offer GPS in roaming settings.
Alltel offers a suite of GPS applications that include TeleNav GPS Navigator and Alltel Navigation for turn-by-turn driving directions, as well as Alltel Where — an application that serves up points of interest such as gas stations, shops, restaurants, hotels, parks, ATMs, hospitals, and schools.
These applications will get more use now that they can be used in more cities -=- 45 major metro areas, they say. This will also allow insecure bosses to track their mobile employees no matter where they are. Previously, they were limited to tracking them within the Alltel calling area.
As Information Week notes, this works well with Alltel’s recently-launched nationwide WiFi service. There are currently 60,000 Alltel hotspots in “airports, hotels, cares, and other public places.”
Good news for Alltel subscribers. Hopefully, we see some of the other regional networks striking such GPS roaming agreements.
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