Tritel has the wireless license to serve 14 million people in the south central U.S., including Kentucky, and is the only one of the three yet to go public. Triton has opened 43 stores, as well as marketing through 77 corporate sales reps and 167 other dealers and retailers in the Southeast. In the third quarter of this year, that company racked up over 51,000 new subscribers. While customers and investors alike seek to differentiate among the national and local players in the wireless game, SunCom, like Sprint, seeks to seamlessly offer both. Powertel concentrates its energies on its 34 core Southeastern cities, and along the literal highways that connect them.
People tend to do business and to vacation by region.
What's unique about us is that we connect the highways and parkways you travel on between metro centers, whereas a lot of carriers just cover the metro pockets. BellSouth Mobility's general manager, Larry Fox, says that business customers are first concerned about rates, which are now offered in so many forms that some guidance is vital. All carriers and their customers have learned from the first Kentucky change, last year in western Kentucky. We have an RV in our lot right now that we'll be taking to public events when the 606 to 859 change occurs, so we can reprogram people's phones for them on the spot. The company will begin offering its service in the greater Lexington and Louisville areas in the first quarter of 2000.