Call service is decent but often has audio glitches while talking, overall decent for making and receiving calls. 3G on the other hand is a little subpar. I ofter get 2-3 bars at home but at SFSU it drops to 1X to no service often in that area but mostly inside buildings. I believe it's a phone problem or possibly poor signal strength? Either way, the 3G service is fairly decent in most places, even while riding the bus but I've had times when it's been stuck in 1X and extremely slow downloads.

Horrible reception. Had to consistently walk 2+ blocks for service to place calls / texts. Sporadic and intermittent vm / txt notifications at random hours. SFSU yielded better service but it was generally poor as well. I absolutely hated ATT and their customer service.

AT&T has been getting progressively worse for the past few years. It was great 5 or more years ago but honestly at SFSU I have zero reception, the Financial District is constantly going between 0-1 bars, and my house has only 1 bar in the Fillmore. And like someone else said, Hayes Valley is the Valley of no reception.

I live in the inner sunset. Calls never drop but data (3g) Goes from 1x to 3g to nothing 1000 times or more a day. Streaming music from the internet is useless. I would use google voice to send a txt and it would fail for like 3 to 4 attempts (That is very little data). Verizon needs a tower out in the sunset area, like on the top of the De Young Museum.

As a phone, the iPhone is a great PDA. I used to have Verizon for about 4 years, and before that, Nextel for about 5 years, and so I expected to be able to use my phone wherever and whenever. Wrongo! It is truly a testament to how many cool other features the device has that I have put up with worse phone service than I used to get with my old Sprint brick phone more than ten years ago. I can't use it in my home office... I have to go to the top floor in the building and stay on the side nearest the street to be able to use the phone at home. My wife won't talk to me on the phone... she'll say "call me from the land line when you get home." And don't try to use your AT&T phone at AT&T Park. Astonishing that they don't put a freaking cell tower in their own ball park! Wow. Wow.

Completely unable to make phone calls in my apartment, even standing near a window on top floor with line of sight over buildings. I have given up even being able to talk on my phone at home. How ridiculous is that!? Entire area of Lower Haight and Hayes Valley horribly bad. Driving through that area last night I went a good 12 - 15 blocks with 0 - 1 bars reception after it dropped my call. Terribly dissatisfied and frustrated.

I bought an iPad 3g hoping to access my favorite web radio station at work (since my employer blocks it on their network), at first I was able to access it, but after a couple of weeks there was no longer any signal. My secretary who sits across from me says she needs to find a window and wave her iphone around to try to detect a signal if she wants to make a call.

I live on Nob Hill and can get PHONE reception up here, but despite living in a studio, my phone rarely gets a data connection in the bathroom. (yeah, I know..). In the financial district I get data about 1 / 2 the time. Many parts of SF (W. Addition, Castro, Marina Green), NO data. ALWAYS the same spots. Not even the crappy "edge" service. Many times it says "E", but there's no connection. Every time I call T Mobile, same thing, they want me to call from a land line to "troubleshoot." Right, so it's the phone that's the problem. Odd how it conks out at same locations every time. SUCKS! What's the point of paying for data service on a mobile phone when there's no service to be had? NO THX T Mobile.

Consistently can't make calls or have calls dropped, it says I have 3G but I usually only see the spinning wheel when I try to access data network. Wretched, wretched, wretched. If it doesn't improve when Verizon comes on board, I'll (reluctantly) go to an Android.

At Waller and Cole, reception is spotty to nonexistent. Some Nokia models get a bar or two extra, but most phones can't get a signal as you walk around the neighborhood. The entire Haight and Cole Valley are pretty awful. ATT kept saying they were 'building out their network' and would be done by this fall, but I've seen no change in service. Sitting by my window in my apartment I often get no signal at all. I bought a MicroCell for my apartment, so I'm paying AT&T for the privilege of using my own network to make calls. Also, AT&T just changed my rate plan, since they decided my $115 / month wasn't enough, since they now recognize the Nexus One (which I bought at full price from Google, of course) as a Smart Phone, which means I have to pay $45 for text+data instead of $30, even though I use the same amount of data. It just gets worse and worse, and I've been a customer with AT&T / Cingular for 8 years. I like the idea of a class action lawsuit - they want more and more money for NO service in many areas, in the center of San Francisco even. Is it greed? Incompetence? What?

Live on Beulah b / w Stanyan and Shrader. Is AT&T going to do something about this? If not, they are deplorable. We had to get land lines because we cannot make or receive calls in our apartment. Will pay whatever $$ fee there is to leave AT&T whenever a new carrier picks up iPhone.

No AT&T reception at all at Mississippi and Mariposa where I work. AT&T is useless, a real ripoff in San Francisco.

Terrible service from AT&T. I rarely can use the phone, and rarely can I get email or use the web. This service is a rip off, they should be sued for cheating their San Francisco customers. I am going to use my Iphone as a ipod touch. I need to buy a phone from a real cell phone service.

AT&T has several very distinct dead zones in SF. Another is Hayes Valley and other spotty zones include the inner Mission and some of Haight Ashbury. THE WORST cell phone service I have ever experienced. Major frustration many times per week.

Inside the 5th floor of a building facing the intersection I mentioned. My desk is near a window, but my cell has no bars and no 3G. In some days, I get lucky with getting three bars and GPRS, but they don't last long. Frustrating.

I used to have reception and now I have almost none. AT&T really does suck in SF!

trying to switch to Credo. Sprint has never worked well in my apartment in Noe Valley. Now I am trying out the Hero HTC with Credo and it works fine. But the phone is driving me crazy with all of it's apps. and my hands are too big for the tiny touch key board! But sound is very clear.

Little to no reception in my house or even standing on my street. T-Mobile told me for weeks (since I got the phone) that it was a technical problem with my tower. Today they "slipped-up" and told me that a new tower needs to be installed to service my area. Very poor customer service.

The sound quality on metro PCS can be poor. However, I rarely have the problem of not being able to make calls. I do have some breaking up and dropping frequently, but thats acceptable, because I can just hang up and call back. Long story short I'm thankful to always be able to make calls. Metro PCS is good for the money you pay, thinking of switching to the Blackberry for Boost so I can get 3g. (It runs on sprint.)

It's worse when it shows you that you have full bars but then it doesn't work. Or you're on the Edge network when you should be on 3G. I've called AT&T about it and one lady just kept on insisting that this is normal... it's been like this in this area since the beginning of August when I noticed it felt like I didn't have a phone... for the lack of usage.