'NO SERVICE AVAILABLE' HAUNTING PRICEVILLE

Knight-Ridder Tribune Business News - The Decatur Daily

August 24, 2006

Tommy Smothers, minister at New Friendship Baptist Church, is disappointed by the lack of bars in Priceville.

Not the alcohol-serving kind of bars.

Smothers is frustrated that the bars, that familiar symbol of signal strength, have disappeared from his mobile phone since Cingular merged with AT&T Wireless earlier this year.

The company's slogan is "Raising the Bar," and company officials say the merger added no fewer than 135 mobile-phone towers to its North Alabama network, but Priceville residents west of Interstate 65 say that since April they've had weak signal strength or no service at all at their homes.

A company spokeswoman doesn't know the source of the problem but said she would investigate.

THE DAILY found earlier this week that a Cingular phone gave a "no service available" warning at I-65 and Alabama 67. East of I-65, only rainfall was scarcer. There was no service at the Priceville Business Center or Mother's Friend Day Care or Priceville Baptist Church or the municipal complex.

The signal bars flicker and disappear for customers who drive down Skidmore Road and live on Pine and Cedar streets. Service finally pops back at Priceville Elementary School.

Smothers said his mobile service was fine for years when he was with BellSouth, AT&T and even Cingular. Until April. Since then, he has gotten a combination of promises and the runaround from the company, he said.

"They're just not concerned about service in Priceville," he said. "If I lived in the boondocks, or if we'd never had coverage, I'd understand."

The spring dropout coincides with the merger of Cingular Wireless with AT&T. The merger and construction of seven mobile-phone towers in Morgan County gave Cingular customers in Decatur fewer drop-outs and fewer busy signals, company officials said recently after they finished merging the two phone systems.

Cingular representatives repeatedly said they were working on the towers and that she would be talking again soon, Smothers' neighbor, Cricket Ward said. Nothing has changed yet. Her husband is a trucker. His Cingular phone was working great in Georgia this week, but he had to phone his wife on the family's land line.

"I don't know now if it's completely over with," she said. "I've been with Cingular four to five years. We had full signal until they started working on the towers. Now you punch it, and it says 'no service.' Once in a while you get one bar. I don't know the answer."

Regional spokesman Dawn Benton said she didn't know the reason for the dropouts but promised to contact Smothers and Ward to try to solve the problem.