u.s. cellular

If you live in the Midwest, or you're a Chicago White Sox fan, there's a good chance you're familiar with U.S. Cellular. As the sixth largest wireless carrier in the country after the "big four" (Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T) and MetroPCS, U.S. Cellular serves 6.1 million customers in 26 states scattered around the center of the country, New England, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southeast.

For much of its life, Chicago-based U.S. Cellular appeared content with serving its home network area and offering its customers a relatively uninspiring lineup of handsets that you could also find with other CDMA carriers like Verizon Wireless. In the last couple of years, however, the carrier has awakened from its slumber. It secured roaming agreements with other operators to form a nationwide network, it activated 3G data services, and it began to introduce exclusive high-end smartphones like the HTC Desire and Samsung Mesmerize. And just two weeks ago, it introduced the Belief Project, which is a program that rewards long-term customers with a variety of benefits such as quicker phone upgrades and a cap on overage fees.

Last week at CTIA in San Francisco, I chatted briefly with Mary Dillon, U.S. Cellular's president and CEO. Formerly the global chief marketing officer and executive vice president for McDonald's Corporation, Dillon arrived at U.S. Cellular four months ago. She's not only the first female CEO at the company, but also the first woman to take the top spot at a major wireless carrier in the United States. John Coyle, the carrier's senior director of customer strategy, joined us to talk about the Belief Project, 4G, Android, and growing a nationwide network.

Q: Last week U.S. Cellular introduced the Belief Project. What's the story behind it and what do you hope to accomplish? Dillon: We're very excited about the Belief Project because we expect that it will help grow our business. We expect we'll get new customers and, because of what the Belief Project is offering, keep returning customers at an even greater rate. It's all about rewarding customers and addressing that pinpoint in the industry. U.S. Cellular is the first to bring about this rule-changing way of business to the market.

Q: Some of the Belief Project's benefits, like letting customers buy a discounted phone without signing a contract and eliminating upgrade fees, are unusual for the bigger carriers. Will we see more of this? Dillon: Listening to what is on customer's minds is good for business. Being new to the industry, I see there is a real opportunity to have a human relationship to customers instead of it being all about the contract. Our competitors may follow suit down the road, but I think that we can deliver this better than anyone else. While others might try to replicate pieces of it, we're bringing it to life now.

Also, we've just won a J.D. Power call quality award for the tenth consecutive time in [the North central region]. That, along with the Belief Project, gives us a way to differentiate. It's an ongoing way of doing business. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--With the arrival of the Samsung Mesmerize at U.S. Cellular, the Galaxy S series has landed at each of the major wireless carriers in the United States. Indeed, it's been quite a ride since the original Galaxy S device had its debut earlier this year in Las Vegas. We've seen AT&T's Captivate, T-Mobile's Vibrant, Sprint's Epic 4G--the only Galaxy S model to have a full keyboard--and Verizon's Fascinate.

In design the Mesmerize most resembles the Fascinate, but you'll notice the hallmarks of the entire Galaxy S series, including … Read more

As promised, U.S. Cellular is delivering a Samsung Galaxy S device this fall, and it will arrive on October 27 under the name Samsung Mesmerize.

The Mesmerize will cost $199.99 after an $80 mail-in rebate and largely resembles Verizon's Samsung Fascinate in design. Like the rest of the Galaxy S series, the smartphone features a 4-inch Super AMOLED touch screen, 1GHz Hummingbird processor, Android 2.1, a 5-megapixel camera with HD video capture, and Samsung's Media Hub video store.

The Mesmerize will also come preloaded with Swype and a number of U.S. Cellular services, including … Read more

U.S. Cellular announced yesterday that it is launching a new customer loyalty program called the Belief Project. The program, which is one of the first of its kind in the wireless industry, puts an end to many common carrier practices like forcing customers to sign a new contract if they buy a discounted phone.

Many of the Belief Project's benefits will depend on "Belief Points," which customers will start earning automatically and free of charge. The points then can be redeemed for a variety of rewards, such as earlier phone upgrades, additional lines, new phones handsets … Read more

U.S. Cellular is on a mission for more smartphones, which may account for its recent announcement that the carrier is adding the BlackBerry Bold 9650 to its stable. U.S. Cellular is quick to note that the 9650 is BlackBerry 6 ready, which will apparently be available to the phone in the near future. As we mentioned in our review of the Sprint version, the 9650 has a GSM chip for your globe trotting needs in addition to the CDMA one you'll be using stateside. Other notable features include a 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and 3G--both HSPA and … Read more

In April, U.S. Cellular revealed that it would offer the Android-based HTC Desire this summer, but since then, we've been waiting for an official release date. Well, it looks like we finally got one.

The carrier announced on Wednesday that the Desire will be available starting August 27, but pricing information was not provided at this time. The Desire will ship running Android 2.1 with HTC Sense; it features a 3.7-inch WVGA touch screen, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and a 5-megapixel camera.

The Desire will be the second Android smartphone for U.S. Cellular, behind … Read more

New smartphones and LTE technology are on their way to U.S. Cellular. During the carrier's quarterly earnings call Thursday, Executive Vice President of Operations Alan Ferber said the RIM BlackBerry Bold, the Android-powered HTC Desire, and a variant of the Samsung Galaxy S Andorid smartphone will land in the carrier's lineup by the end of the year.

Though U.S. Cellular has long offered BlackBerry handsets, the addition of the Desire and the Galaxy S mark an aggressive Android push by the regional carrier. It introduced its first Android handset, the entry-level Samsung Acclaim, only last month, … Read more

U.S. Cellular is teaming with TeleNav to bring turn-by-turn navigation to the carrier's smartphones.

On Friday, the carrier announced its Your Navigator Deluxe service that offers such features as voice-guided directions, 3D maps, speech recognition, more than 12 million business listings, and traffic and weather information. Even better, there isn't an additional fee to use TeleNav as it's all included in U.S. Cellular's new smartphone data plan, which costs $30 per month.

Supported smartphones include the recently announced Samsung Acclaim, as well as the HTC Touch Pro2, HTC Snap, the RIM BlackBerry Tour 9630, … Read more

Over the past few days, Samsung has unveiled the identities of a couple of Galaxy S phones heading to the U.S., including the Samsung Captivate for AT&T and the Samsung Vibrant for T-Mobile.   But it seems as if Samsung has plenty of Android love to spread around as it announces three additional models for Sprint, Verizon, and U.S. Cellular. Though the Galaxy S handsets share many core features, they all have unique designs and carrier-specific services, so here's a quick rundown of each one.

Samsung Epic 4G for Sprint: As you might have guessed from the name, the Epic is a 4G network-capable phone--the second one for Sprint after the HTC Evo 4G--and it has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and a 4-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touch screen. According to Samsung, its Super AMOLED display has a higher contrast, wider viewing angles, faster response time, and lets it create a thinner phone than a traditional LCD does. We've seen the Super AMOLED screen on the Samsung Wave, and we can say that most of the benefits are true.

Armed with such a display, 4G, and Samsung's 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor, multimedia will, once again, play a central role on the Epic, much like it did on the Evo 4G. However, Samsung will make it even easier to get  and watch TV shows and movies on the phone by including a video store. Samsung has not revealed where the content will come from,  but according to the company,  it includes "some of the biggest names in entertainment."

The phone's other goodies include a 5-megapixel camera with HD video capture, a front-facing VGA camera for video calls, and the capability to act as a mobile hot spot for up to five devices. Samsung will ship the Epic  running Android version 2.1 and its TouchWiz interface; however, if you're concerned about another Behold II situation, don't worry: the Epic will get the Android 2.2 Froyo update. According to Sprint, it plans to announce pricing and release date in the coming months, but you can sign up for updates via its Web site. If you're an Android developer, Samsung has a 4G Developer Guide available now for anyone who wants to create apps for the Epic. … Read more