Moving to Ft. Wainwright in February. (Anchorage, Fairbanks: hotels, houses, restaurants)

[sesera86]

I was wondering if they have good verizon service in Fairbanks.

[Dakster]

I am sure someone that has more experience than myself will chime in. I have only visited AK. I drove from the L48 to AK. I drove in via Top of the World Hwy (Taylor) thru Chicken and left via the more direct route of the AK Highway. We went all the way 'down' to the Kenai Peninsula. Unless you have a satellite phone (and probably even then) there are a ton of no service areas, even on the road system. The more touristy the route or populated the area was, the better the service.

In summary, I didn't have any issues in any of the 'popluated' areas of AK on the road system. and we had two Verizon phones and an ATT one with us. Typically, they either both worked or didn't, I attribute this to rural=no cell towers. As an example, in Tok I had service, but once the road went off 'into the wild' where businesses and houses disappeared, so did cell phone service.

Fairbanks and surrounding areas are obviously larger... I didn't go to any of the bases, since I am not military, so I can't answer how the phone works on them. Sorry, I don't remember whether I had service when I drove past them either.

I know you just asked about Fairbanks, but at one point you will probably want to leave Fairbanks and visit other areas...

[heathen]

We don't have Verizon stores up here, but they have a deal with both ACS and AT&T, so the service is pretty good. Even the relatively remote (paved) highways like the Parks and Richardson are largely covered these days, much better than through northern Canada.

[Dakster]

I didn't encounter cell phone availability in Northern Canada, except in Ft. Nelson. I ended up using WiFi in restaurants and hotels we stayed at with Skype or MagicJack. The bad part is that I had bars indicating service, but could never complete a call and not for lack of trying at times. (I know why now, but I don't want to hijack the thread anymore)

FWIW, the FCC mandates that cell phone companies must make deals with each other - the catch is whether the 'foriegn' cell phone company (verizon in this case) wants to pay for the access. In this case, it apperars that they have, which is good for us Verizon phone owners.

[AKStafford]

Verizon is building a switching center in Anchorage. Currently their phones work on the ACS/GCI networks. So yes, your phone will work in areas with cell coverage and soon Alaskans will be able to sign up for Verizon phones.

[Usonia]

Both Verizon Prepaid and contract phones were roaming for our family as of August 2012.
As soon as we moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, we could not update PRL. We got some message about "Welcome to Alaska Communications, the service is not available". Sure we could call out on our prepaid phones, but it was all roaming charges and rendered them useless.
I confirmed it with Verizon that they had no tower sharing agreement up here. We had to do the ten digit dial around for every call, in Fairbanks. Many times the calls would not connect. After about three tries per call, we gave up Verizon and went with ATT.
Maybe things have changed since August, but that was our experience with Verizon here.