Yesterday I ceased being a customer of U.S. Cellular after twenty years and five months. It was in May 2024 that T-Mobile announced a plan to acquire both U.S. Cellular's customers and its stores, as well as 30% of the company's spectrum wireless licences. The deal would be closed over a year later, in May 2025. The plan was to transition U.S. Cellular customers over to T-Mobile. That happened yesterday.
U.S. Cellular was founded in 1983 as a subsidiary of Telephone and Data Systems Inc. as United States Cellular. It was in 1999 that the company shortened its name to U.S. Cellular. The year 2002 saw some big changes for U.S. Cellular. It bought PrimeCo Wireless Communications. On November 2002, it launched in the Chicago area. It also hired native Chicagoan Joan Cusack as their spokesman. That year it also exchanged wireless assets with Cingular and as a result got new spectrum in 13 states. From 2003 to 2016, Comiskey Park in Chicago was known as U.S. Cellular Field, the company having bought the naming rights. It entered the St. Louis market in 2005.
Over time, U.S. Cellular would make some major changes. In 2010, it sold several of its markets to Sprint, including what had been its long-time home, Chicago. In 2020, it rebranded itself again as USCellular. Of course, as mentioned before, it was in 2024 that T-Mobile announced plans to acquire most of USCellular's mobile operations. In the wake of the acquisition, USCellular rebranded itself Array Digital Infrastructure and maintains operations of wireless towers across the nation. It is no longer in the business of consumer wireless networks.
U.S. Cellular had expanded into the Columbia, Missouri market in December 1988, so it was well established in the area years before I got my first cell phone in February 2006. As for why I went with U.S. Cellular, at the time it was more reliable in the area than most of the major companies and more affordable as well. Our service from U.S. Cellular has remained fairly good over the years, with almost no dropped calls and very few places where we couldn't get service.
That's not to say that U.S. Cellular was perfect. Prices for their service crept up over the years, to the point that the past few years my sister and I (she's on my account) considered switching companies. Indeed, we asked about getting unlimited data about three years ago only to find it was cost prohibitive for our budget. After T-Mobile bought out U.S. Cellular, we seriously considered switching to T-Mobile, but never did.
As it is, I wish we had done so sooner. After setting up my account with T-Mobile yesterday, I switched to one of T-Mobile's plans that is not only less than what we were paying U.S. Cellular, but gives us unlimited data as well. Unlimited data U.S. Cellular would have been forty dollars more than it would have been on T-Mobile! We also get various perks, such as special deals on various products and services on T-Mobile Tuesdays and possibly even free streaming services (such as Netflix). As to reliability, so far I haven't noticed any problems.
That's not to say I don't feel a bit sad that U.S. Cellular is gone. They were my first cellular phone company and they always were reliable. I can't say they did too badly towards us. And, while I don't know about now, they were certainly better than some of the major companies around here (particularly Verizon), whose coverage could be spotty at best. At any rate, I am looking forward to what T-Mobile has to offer.
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