iPhone Roaming Bug with AT&T?

This isn’t the first post of mine with the potential to make me look like an idiot, but maybe someone out there can help. Here’s the background:

In Taos, NM where I live, there isn’t any AT&T coverage. None. Nada. Zip. But you can use an iPhone here by using a “partner” network. That means roaming, obviously, except that your iPhone here will still show a direct connection to AT&T. A correspondent of mine brought iPhones here from California a year ago and hasn’t had a lick of trouble. His phone bills don’t show any roaming, either. The same thing is true over the mountains in Montezuma, NM, where another correspondent of mine has been using her iPhone for a long time without any problems, even though there aren’t any AT&T towers in the area. The AT&T coverage map shows no wireless service for Montezuma, so she must be roaming, yet the phone says she’s connected to AT&T.

[No, I don’t have an iPhone, and I’m not familiar with the interface, so all of this is hearsay. I’d love to get one, though.]

Naturally, having heard from these two people that their iPhones work fine and show them connected directly to AT&T, even though there supposedly isn’t any network coverage, I called the Santa Fe AT&T store to ask if someone living in Taos could come down and get an iPhone!

Store manager: “Yes, but your contract could be cancelled after three months.”

The reason he gave me is that “there isn’t any AT&T coverage,” so using the iPhone most of the time in Taos (a roaming area) would violate the terms of the contract and could result in cancellation. That’s a pretty severe threat, as far as I’m concerned — who wants a dead expensive iPhone?

I called back a while later and talked to someone else. His story was more or less the same. They would sell me an iPhone, but then I’d basically be on my own. This made no sense to me, so I did a little research and found that there are plenty of reports of iPhones in roaming areas not indicating correct network status, and that this may be an iPhone bug, not an AT&T mistake. My friends in Taos and Montezuma have no indication that they’re not hooked up to AT&T directly and show no roaming activity or charges on their phone bills. In fact, until I told them “there isn’t any coverage where you are,” they thought they were using AT&T directly.

Of course, maybe they are. Who knows?

AT&T pays a fee to partner carriers when subscribers use their phones in areas where there’s no AT&T coverage. Could the truth be that AT&T doesn’t know when you’re roaming with your iPhone under certain circumstances? That’s the only reason I can think of for the jarring ambiguity from the Santa Fe AT&T store. In contrast, the national AT&T customer service rep I called earlier was very firm:

“No. We cannot offer you a contract in your Zip Code.”

Here then are the main points:

1. AT&T truly doesn’t want to sell me an iPhone to use in Taos. In fact, i can’t sign up online based on my Zip Code.

2. iPhones work fine in Taos, however. If you have one and come here, there isn’t any problem, and the fastest data service is available.

3. Taos is officially a roaming area for AT&T, but an iPhone here shows that it’s connected to the parent network, not a partner.

4. The Santa Fe AT&T store will sell me a contract, even though I live in Taos, but in the same breath, they tell me there’s a chance my contract would be terminated after three months for excessive roaming, and that there’s a danger I’d be left with a dead phone. They’re obviously very embarrassed by my questions, too.

5. Googling for answers on this will bring up numerous accounts of iPhones not showing roaming activity where there isn’t any AT&T wireless network coverage.

Whew!

Either my ignorance of the subject is making it hard for me to see the obvious, or else there’s something very fishy going on here.

One way or the other, AT&T is lying: you can’t use an iPhone here if you live here (supposedly), but you can bring one here and use it (???). And of course you CAN live here and use an iPhone, except that AT&T won’t sell you one if you do live here, although they actually will, if you go down to Santa Fe and ask for one. And if you do that, they’ll give it to you but make you feel like an idiot.

Crazy-making, I call it. If I had money to burn, I’d just go get one and brazen it out. As things stand, however, that sounds like Russian roulette. My friends with iPhones aren’t having any problems, but no one can guarantee that they won’t. AT&T won’t guarantee a damned thing, in fact, at least not in person, not to my face.

The bottom line for now is that I’m staying with Verizon until somebody tells me the truth, which I have a feeling isn’t going to come from AT&T, or even Apple.