Well, that would explain things, I guess. We moved to AZ in late 2000 (from California). At that point we'd only been on Sprint for about a year, maybe less. In any case the phones worked and we didn't have issues.
That was the aim: although a lot of affiliates made a patchwork of "roaming" networks for Sprint, the intent was that the end user wouldn't be aware that there was a difference, as much as possible. Affiliates operated the stores, paid their employees, and built out the cell sites and switching gear for each region they were assigned. BUT, they were to always identify themselves to end users as "Sprint," use the Sprint logo and brands in all communications, purchase all handsets and accessories from Sprint corporate to resell to customers, and pretend to be one big happy and unified family (even though post-Nextel merger, they weren't, at all).
In return, Sprint procured and shipped the phones, handled the customer service and billing, and paid the affiliates what amounted to a steeply-discounted roaming charge for voice minutes and data used on their networks.
I believe PHX came online sometime around late 1997, and Alamosa was testing for almost a year before bringing it online to the public, so it was very new when you first moved there.
But if Sprint considered PHX a "second" tier market then, that helps me to understand why Network Vision is such a complete and colossal rollout f-up here in PHX. We don't matter. Not something Sprint would admit, but before I was banned at the Sprint BAW forums I did mention a few times there how Sprint hated the Phoenix market. Maybe more true than I originally thought.
There was a lot of animosity, again, between affiliates and Sprint right after they bought Nextel. Many of them sued, saying the Nextel purchase was just a backdoor way for Sprint to muscle in and compete in these markets after they signed agreements promising they wouldn't do that. Ultimately, Sprint realized they legally had no leg to stand on, so they spent hundreds of millions of bucks buying up the affiliates in order to get rid of the lawsuits. That was a lot of cash they didn't expect to have to spend.
Ever since then, those markets have been redheaded stepchildren. I'd be surprised if any former affiliate employees are still working for Sprint given how poorly many were treated. There are also technical hurdles. Sprint didn't dictate what vendors the affiliates used for their cell sites, antennas, switches and other gear, just as long as the phones worked. So it's very likely that what was used in PHX and other former-Alamosa markets, is very different from the legacy gear Sprint is "used" to dealing with, and that might mean they're not bothering to tackle it until the last minute.
