BoonieCell

mid - June to mid-July Special! This one's for the folks that support their local ATV or Snowmobile clubs! Please 'share'! Yes, yes - I know it's only May 30th, but I wanted to give you plenty of heads up! :-D That and we have been so busy stock has been depleted and no time to reorder. Deliveries to replenish stock should be arriving next week.

So here's the special: During the period between June 15th and July 15th, 2015 show me your 2015 ATV Club membership card or 2014 - 2015 Snowmobile club membership card and get 5% off our already low, low prices for any in-stock, mobile or in-building weBoost cell phone amplifier kit with an MSRP of $299.99 or higher! Membership cards must be from a Maine - based club. No card, no discount. Rain checks will be available for equipment that is normally in-stock that we have run out of. Limit one discount per customer.

Just checked the showroom because it seems like we have a ton of different cell phone booster part numbers on hand.

Did you know, we stock FIVE different models of mobile cell phone boosters for your car, truck, boat, whatever vehicle?

Did you know we stock SIX different models of in-building amplifier for your home or business?

Prices range from $129.99 to $999.99 depending on your needs. Our most popular mobile unit is $299.99, and our most popular in-building unit is $409.99.

Stop by and check out our selection of weBoost / Wilson Electronics product!

BoonieCell. A division of K Tronics Satellite & Home Theater. 57 Main St, Madison, ME (under the green awning!) 207.696.3200 www.ktronicsmaine.com

KtronicsMaine

Offering up a little Public Service Announcement / rant for you:

Regarding 'parasitic', 'off-brand' or 'third party billed' cellular providers, you get what you pay for. Smart talk, Flash Wireless, TracFone fit this category. I'm sure there are many, many others.

Parasitic in this context simply means that they have none of the operational infrastructure, they simply buy bulk service from the provider, divvy it up into customer-sized pieces and resell it to you. They do the billing, saving the 'real' providers time and money.

Sure! Great! You get unlimited calling and data for $50/ month! Wow! Awesome! Does it really work everywhere your 'real' provider did? In most cases NO, and here's why:

I'll use the most common example to my rural corner of Maine. Verizon Wireless (VZW) and US Cellular (USCC) have a mutual roaming agreement for the benefit of their (THEIR) post-paid customers. This means that in most instances you -as a USCC customer - can use your phone (for voice and 3G data) as long as you can communicate with a USCC tower OR a VZW tower. Depending on your phones settings, you MAY see some indication that you are roaming (or 'off-network') but in most cases you will not pay for roaming. This works mutually for customers of both providers.

So, you fell into the trap of one of the parasitic providers? The salesperson told you that it works just like a Verizon phone, right? Well, that's true...kind of. Here's the rub: That mutual roaming agreement only applies to customers of USCC and Verizon, NOT to customers being billed by the parasitic 3rd party billers! Imagine this frequently occurring scenario: Bob is a loyal VZW customer. He pays $120/ month for unlimited talk and, say, 20GB of data. Norm used to have VZW but fell into the 'save big money' trap and was told this new company could cut his bill in half.... and they DID! Bob and Norm are sitting on Bobs porch, relaxing when Norm's phone rings. He answers it and the call drops. "Huh, that's weird," Bob says, "I've got full bars here all the time!" Bob's phone shows 3G lock and 5 bars... Norms is showing 1 bar intermittently and 1X. Why does this happen? Elementary! Bob's phone is connecting to the USCC tower, Norm's phone (which doesn't have mutual roaming) is struggling to pick up a VZW tower from twice as far away!

Does this mean all parasitic phone plans are junk? NO! By all means, if it happens to work for you, in the areas you frequent, by all means: save the money! But if the phone doesn't work where you need it to, is cutting the bill in half REALLY a bargain?