I would call 47k small, my high school in Miami had 9k kids at one point, so if my high school is one fifth of your population ya i would call that small.

But lets do the math; So lets say 75% of your town has a cell phone that would be 35,250 and lets say of all of them are split down the line for all 4 major. You would have 8812.5 Tmobile customers. Now lets say one third of them have PDA phones which require data plans, that leaves you with 2937.5 customers.

Now you can look this up on google if you don't believe this information i am about to type. "To illustrate this point better, let's discuss the financial basics of building a 3g tower. Most cell 3g towers cost between $75,000 and $200,000 to build with the average being aroun...
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That post made so much sense. Couldn't have worded it better myself. AT&T has more cash flow because they are larger, they can afford an occassional stupid decision like developing 3G in Enid.

I guess that Pioneer, Sprint and U.S Cellular are stupid to right? Since the only two people replying to this probably have no knowledge of Enid you have no right to make judgments with no foundation. Enid is a hub for Northwest Oklahoma so a lot of people travel through here. Not to mention T mobile has invested in more cell towers and built out their coverage quit a bit since I moved here five years ago.

Oh I'm sorry I am not the founding father of Enid and know everything about it but i can guarantee that a huge majority of people outside of Oklahoma don't know of Enid; and how bout you take your heart from off of your sleeve and read into what I'm saying. I said this is the reason why they haven't done this yet, don't be mad that its not the answer you want. And just to help you out a little bit i live in Kansas City now, and we have a population of around 450k. This City is almost ten times the size of your town and it has gaps of 3g coverage for T mobile everywhere. Especially northern Kansas City, my friend doesn't get 3g coverage on his G1 till gets towards downtown and the river.

Ok it has nothing to do with wherein my heart on my sleeve. It has to do with paying attention to the question I asked, the question being when will they get 3G here and why haven't they built out their EDGE coverage here. Even where they have recently added new voice coverage those areas only have GPRS. We both know that EDGE is cheap to deploy and with an expected spike in smart phone sales it's only logical to ask why they are so far behind on deploying better technology.

the FCC USF helps fund the expansion in "rural" areas (being in tulsa I know Enid is pretty good sized but like the other guy said- not compared to say miami) but thats how AT&T, U.S. Cellular etc have expanded the area and will continue to expand there.
Tmobile being a German owned company the COE's etc dont have to travel around the U.S. so not imprvoing their network here doesnt affect them and is costly. it benefits them more to expand their service in other countries right now because thats what a lot of comsumers are looking for. they are going for the international market.

Well lets do the math if the avg customer spends $25 on a data plan and you have 3000 of them that would be 75,000 thousand in just one month they would make the cost up over a year or more. Is their anyone in here that can give me a more intelligent answer.

Ya i said $118,000 would be for only 1 tower, now if your town is small enough for one tower to cover the whole area then, go ahead. But all those carriers you named earlier are all CDMA based companies, so its a lot easier for them to build 3g because they need less towers, I am pretty sure that CMDA gets 3-5 times the distance of GSM. Correct me if I am wrong.

That actually depends on the kind of spectrum they use as we know 850Mhz gets better coverage then 1900Mhz and no their is AT&T they have GSM coverage here. Sprint operates in the 1900Mhz band but their native coverage sucks here. AT&T owns some 1900Mhz spectrum as well as some 850Mhz spectrum they picked up from CellOne here. Not sure about Pioneer but I think its all 850.

NO, CDMA's ranges is about 110 kilometers and GSM is about 35 kilometers, it has nothing to do with frequency. Frequency only changes penetrability and data speed. Higher frequencies have better data speeds, and lower frequencies have better penetrability.

Ok have done some research your right on CDMA having better range. Strangely they seem to have an equal number of pros and cons. I talked to T Mobile and they said they don't know of any plans to even launch 3G here in Oklahoma. I sure hope they do something soon at least expand their EDGE coverage here. I'm sick of the inability to stream music on my phone when I am driving around and those slow 40k speeds need to be a thing of the past guess the good news is where they do have EDGE I get speeds of about 180K peak with 120K avg. I just hope all this loyalty pays off LOL.

What i would do is bring up the statement you made earlier, about they make close to 75,000 off of the T-Mobile customers in this area.

Patial Quote ==> "The lease of the space on the tower would net between $18,000 to $30,000 per year depending upon the location." So just for one tower you want Tmobile drop around 118,000 dollars for 3k customers. They have bigger fish to fry. "

It seems to me that they would already be paying the lease for the towers since they need the towers for voice and edge coverage. Adding 3G to the cost of the towers wouldn't change that.

BTW, I live in a place that has 250,000 and they are just getting around to rolling 3G out here.

Ya the leasing your probably right about, but 3g you have to build, even if its an addition to a already existing tower.