Reception for Cricket here is pretty good. I have never dropped a call. I always have had signal at home and around Chula Vista and San Diego. Only in some buildings, like the Target at Plaza Bonita do I not get a signal. Overall really good.

I live in Tijuana and travel all around that town and San Diego. Right now I have four bars in this Tijuana internet cafe. Anywhere I wander in the Centro area gives me excellent coverage. Few complaints in SD. Can call from my TJ apartment, even. Virgin uses Sprint network. Great coverage. I have been dropped in the Spring Valley area, but don't recall any other.

My job has me traveling around all San Diego south county. I have had Verizon, Cingular and Nextel. I know no service is perfect and that is fine. But Nextel's service is unacceptable and just plain horrible. Whether I go to Imperial Beach, San Diego(near Reo dr off of the 54 freeway), Rancho Del Rey(Chula Vista) or Coronado, my phones (i760 and i530) only have service half the time. And it seems like the rest of the time I am asking people to repeat themselves because the transmission is unclear. DON"T GO WITH NEXTEL IF YOU NEED A RELIABLE SERVICE.

Phone will show 5 bars until you connect, then it drops tp 2. I had Cingular lock out the international towers from Mexico, no difference. The store rep said that swithcing from the 64kb SIM card to a 32kb may improve reception in general. Not sure why that would be. Maybe the 64kb card is too sensitive. I may try it and see what happens.

nextel consistently suck throughout the county