Northern Georgia Wireless customers receive new services

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Wireless customers in northern Georgia are seeing new services and greater benefits, thanks to a recent move by Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile to provide cellular service to 10 counties in that state. By incorporating this new area of Georgia into the SuperSystem, Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile has introduced new service pricing, which includes extended home-rate calling to over 33,000 square miles in the Southeast.

This SuperSystem expansion provides for home-rate calling to Georgia customers traveling into markets such as Charlotte, Hickory, Rockingham and Waynesville, North Carolina and Columbia, Greenwood and Upstate South Carolina.

The company also is offering new services to its Georgia customers, including the Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile MobileReach and TraveLink services. TraveLink provides automatic call delivery throughout over 5,000 U.S. cities and Canada.

"With TraveLink, there's no need to know cumbersome roamer access codes to reach a Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile customer," said Jim Akerhielm, Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile vice president-Southeast Region. "Callers just dial the seven-digit number and the TraveLink system does the rest -- the call finds them in whatever TraveLink city they happen to be." Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile recently expanded its coverage area after acquiring the properties from Horizon Cellular earlier this year to provide cellular service to Georgia's Barrow, Hall, Dawson, Lumpkin, White, Habershaw, Banks, Franklin, Stephens, and Rabun counties. Designated as Rural Service Area Georgia 2 (GA2), this area borders Atlanta and includes the cities of Gainesville and Toccoa, among many others.

Providing customers with a broader seamless coverage area, GA2 is contiguous with the current Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile markets of Anderson and Greenville, SC, and stretches as far as suburban Atlanta's Gwinnett and Walton counties. Within this extended calling region lies the 20-mile stretch of U.S. Route 316, which serves as the main commuting corridor between Atlanta and the suburb of Athens, Georgia.

"A customer can now start a call from Toccoa, or Gainesville, and continue it to Anderson, Greenville, Columbia, Charlotte and many places in between -- something customers can't do with some of the newer wireless services that lack the regional coverage that Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile has," Akerhielm said. "In this new service area, customers will receive both higher quality and clearer communications via their cellular phones, faxes, and laptops, plus achieve savings in doing so because of our seamless efficiency."

Throughout the Carolinas and into Georgia, Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile now provides cellular service to an area of approximately 33,000 square miles. According to Akerhielm, the acquisition, representing an addition of nearly 286,000 potential customers, is part of Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile's strategy to expand its leadership position in the wireless industry along the East Coast corridor.

To provide for increasing service demands of the new area, Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile will maintain a Communications Store in Toccoa at 336 Big A Road and one store in Gainesville at 2352 Brown's Bridge Road. They feature a variety of wireless communications products, including cellular phones, fax machines, pagers and accessories.

Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile is the largest wireless services provider on the East Coast and the second largest in the United States. The company offers a full range of wireless personal communications services, including voice, data and paging. Based in Bedminster, NJ, Bell Atlantic NYNEX Mobile has more than four million customers and 6,500 employees in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic, Southeast, and through a separate subsidiary, in the Southwest. The company was formed in July, 1995 by combining Bell Atlantic Mobile's and NYNEX Mobile's cellular operations.