I've never had such bad cell phone service. It seems that all of my friends that have Sprint have the same problems that I do:
I was MUCH happier with my Primeco service. Who are they now? Cingular or something like that? Anyone know if their service is still good? Sprint sucks!
Nokia 5190 with a sim chip. Voicestream provider. Works Great. Follows the Highways well except from Rochester to Buffalo (grr) and has east coast free long distance. My bills are not that bad, and work calls are reimbursed. 
Overall great service and great battery life. Now if I could just find a good belt clip that wouldn't break in thirty minutes my life wold be set. And Brad you are right. Sprint was my last carrier. I just loved when I used to get voice mail a day and a half later from my area director. And he thought that I was just ignoring him. 
I also purchased the Hands free unit with the ear attachment for my car.I am usingthe unit from Sharper Image Catalogue. It is fabulous and easy to use.
Aaron
overall, i like the phone and the sound quality is good along the I-5 corridor (OR, CA, WA). Really hoping they get the coast covered soon.
i also have a pager, that way the phone doesn't have to be on all the time and only three people have the pager number, so when it buzzes, i know i want to talk to them.
The thing is, I couldnt get it to work just right.
I could touch buttons and they would play cute little songs, but i could never dail out.
I opened it up to see if there was a wire loose, but i found that there were no wires, but only a bunch of gum!?!
wierd
I love VoiceStream, if you have any problems they are open 24/7 and the service is great...even for a prepay (I have used other services, which were never quick to help for prepays).
It's the Motorola Star-Tac. I got it when the Nokia that I had conked out. I haven't had trouble with equipment since... and I am pretty hard on stuff like this. It gets tossed into a tool case or dropped on the floor pretty regularly.
Its batteries will last for about a day and a half on standby. If I make a lot of calls during the day I may end up recharging the battery, though. But then ANYBODY with half a brain would know to get an extra battery for their phone, wouldn't they?
As far as service, it's Alltel. They aren't great but they don't suck TOO badly, either. I'd say they only have slight negative air pressure. I have the national roaming plan. I haven't had trouble connecting from just about anywhere I go, except when I'm on the highway, up in the mountains or out in the boonies. But that's to be expected.
as for the SERVICE -
absolute without a doubt THE most AWFUL service I have *EVER* had with a cellular (since buying my first nokia bag phone in 1991)
*Dropped calls - even with full signal strength and not physically moving at all. A MAJOR annoyance expecially if you are calling tech support and have just finished waiting on hold for 45 minutes for a technician.
* System Busy
*EVERY* night between the hours of 9 and 2am it is DAMN NEAR IMPOSSIBLE to place or recieve a call. I'll just get a 'System Busy' along with a fast busy tone. ARRRRGH! What if i am on the highway and have an emergency?! I am not going to re-dial my phone for upwards of 15 to 25 minutes just to call 911!!!! and why can't anyone leave me a voice mail? anyone calling me will get *doo doo doo.. all circuits are busy please try again later*
*voicemails not arriving* Brad mentioned this, and he's right. sometimes it takes HOURS to get a new voice mail. and other times voicemail will show up because the damn phone never rang!
It's really awful.. and ya know, it's not just cingular. Nextel phones do the same thing, at&t phones do the same thing.. Come to think of it, I never noticed this kind of erratic service until all of the cell phones have become digital/GSM phones. This kind of thing was RARE with old analog phones. I thought that as time progresses, technology was supposed to get better, not decline! uugh!. If it wasn't for the fact that I screwed up and gave my cell number as my sole contact number to a lot of friends and collegues, i would have abandoned cellular phones a long time ago and stuck to my trusty motorola single numeric line pager.
*whew* i feel better now
-sean
There service is great, I've called for different reasons many times and I've never had to hold more then 5 or 10 minutes (and that was only once during peak hours). I like it so much I just bought my friend a celly using VoiceStream for his birthday.
Hey, I'm a free Ad!!!
I have always used AT&T service. I used to be a traveling Audio Visual Installer and it was great to use the phone where ever I went. Now I just hang around town and I still have the nation wide service because I don't like to receive big bills. Ky has 1,100 minutes per month and I have 400 minutes per month. I use about 200 of them. Ky uses about 900 of his.
I bought this phone because I am on the phone so little. It's nice to have a phone so small that it fits in your shirt pocket or on a belt loop.
Now I want a good digital camera this size and a computer this size. I would type with my voice and look at the screen with my glasses.
This phone is my only official number. I live in a house with a phone but I can't remember the number. I have 4 phone numbers at work but I don't give them out. This is my phone.
The only problem is that I get terrible reception in my house. This pisses off my parents and others who call. I frequently have to call them back on the house phone. I don't think the reception will ever get better at the house either. That's the curse of living in a small city.
I used to have marginal service when I started with Sprint PCS several years ago. At the time, they were the only provider that had service over the whole New England area at a reasonable price.
However, in the past couple of years they have made great improvements to service in this area. I still get occassional dropped calls but the percentage is low compared to the number of calls I make.
I upgraded to a Startac last year from my Qualcomm and have been very happy with it. It has taken at least a dozen falls with no ill effects (get a better holster than the one included with the phone). It also has data capability which has come in very handy for checking email and sending faxes with a Palm device or laptop. The built in "browser" is garbage however.
A couple of the other guys in the New England area use Voice Stream and AT&T Wireless and have been more or less happy with them. One strange thing though, the AT&T user had to change his phone number after AT&T claimed their system was corrupted and his original number could not be used any longer!
I long for the days of 3-watt analog phones. They had great reception...as long as you didn't mind carrying a few extra pounds!!