I can use my phone in the house, a block off College Ave., most of the time. But it's not great, and sometimes I miss a call. My housemate has Cingular and she says it's even worse.

Sprint is terrible in this area. Very limited reception and usually drops calls. Can't get any reception with it in Tahoe, but Cingular works.

Nextel is marginally better than AT&T which is what I used to have. I still get dropped calls but can at least reasonably complete my calls 60% of the time, whereas with AT&T it was more like 25%. Nextel sound quality is poor though, lots of static on the other end although I can hear them perfectly.

Dead Zone for T Moblie. Wasted my prepaid credit

I am a former ATT / Nokia 3600 user. At this location, in my house, I NEVER had static or dropped calls until about a year after Cingular took over and I began to have frequwnt problems and was told we should migrate to Cingular, had to buy 2 new phones as the ATT ones woldn't work with Cingular... 1 Audiovox SMT5600 and 1 Motorola V620... both had excellent reviews... both get breakup and dropped calls... in my house!

Very erratic performance. Often phone will ring but reception is so poor, a conversation is impossible. Sometimes the phone does not even ring and the call does not appear in my mailbox for 1-2 days! On rare occasions, the phone will actually work well enough to allow a short conversation.

I used to get Average to Below Average reception here, and sometimes lose network coverage altogether. Sometime this year that changed and now my signal is strong and I'm always on-network.

Verizon reception for this part of College Ave. is between poor and none.

Verizon's reception here is great, even within the house.

Reception below the ridgeline on the west side of Hwy. 13 was absolutely miserable in the past. I rarely could hang onto any call for more than a few minutes -- essentially unusable. Verizon was unresponsive to concerns about coverage. Reception quality seems to have improved significantly in the past couple of years. Now usable on a more consistent basis, but still fades out and drops sometimes.

I'm in the Essex (Lakeside and 17th) and reception used to be poor, now for the last week it is non-existant, forcing me to find another carrier. Luckily I found this site (but still no one exactly at my location with any comments on other carriers)

Sprint is useless at this location essentially on the ridge above Skyline about a half mile south of Skyline HS.

I live up Golf Links off of Elysian Fields in Oakland. Reception normally cuts off when I start the trek up Golf Links right at the Zoo, in the first turn, it really doesn't work at all after that point, my calls just go to voicemail. Hopefully this helps somebody. My friend also has Sprint with a better model phone. A tri mode phone and it works 35 percent better than mine but they drop calls constantly as well. The only carriers that work better are Metro and Verizon, In Oakland Metro uses some of the Verizon towers, so that is all that I know about this area. Very Very Poor reception with sprint.

I have used Sprint for at least 3 years. I get some dropped calls but not that often. I used to think that Sprint was not a very good carrier, but after reading all of the comments on other carriers, I think it is much better than I gave it credit for. Sprint seems to work well in SF, downtown parts of Oakland and much of East Bay. It is very poor in Oakland hills. Nothing I read in comments convinced me that any other carrier is better, or as good, in this area. I'm sticking with Sprint.

gets perfect reception, only it drops calls left and right.

Although I usually receive full bars in this area, almost every call has been garbled and interrupted with skips in the audio (half-second gaps of silence).

Coverage with T-Mobile in this area is excellent. The sound quality during my conversations is consistently good, and I never get any dropped calls.

After good reception through Verizon's Extended Network for the past year, they suddenly dropped the extended network (which may have been Sprint). No reception and no explanation for the network change. Customer service trying to help, sending us through phone exercises, but have no clue about what happened to the extended network.

Sprint really is the worst in the Oakland Hills. There is basically no service. I used to have Cingular and it worked fairly well, but its was no picnic either. I have found out that Verizon works the best. You can even get clear signal in Roberts Park and Tilden Park. I think I'll be moving to Verizon.

Actually I get four bars but when I make a call, it gets crackly and the person on the other end can't hear me. This is in North Oakland, inside a small building, near a window. This happens in multiple locations in the East Bay: UC Berkeley campus (94720) Berkeley hills -- at a location supposedly served by a special Cingular tower, and five bars displaying Downtown Berkeley (94720) The Cingular sales guy says he never heard of this happened before ;[