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I had Cingular which was bought by ATT. My reception here in Alachua and elsewhere in the county has declined significantly in the last few months. I'm here looking over other providers I'm so frustrated. I'll go from three or four bars to dropped calls standing still!

Get fairly decent reception throughout Alachua. Drop calls in Gainesville at 39th and CR241 area and on 441 by The Home Depot. Sprint has the worst customer service and billing has not been correct in 8months.

Sprint reception is bad in this area. I have about a 50% chance of getting a call to go through from inside (or outside) my house. I have roaming but it costs me $0.69 a minute so I never use it. I would not recommend Sprint to anyone who actually wants to use their cell phone to talk to people.

The earlier comment on Verizon was accidentally listed as Virgin. Virgin gets no reception at all here. It's only when you get to I-75 or Gainesville that it picks up again. Verizon gets a little but nothing reliable.

Three visitors with Verizon service also had the same result--little or no reception in house, walking 200 feet into the backyeard gives reasonable reception.

(Our primary travel / use areas -- Alachua; High Springs; northwest, northeast, and downtown Gainesville; Newberry; Trenton; Williston; Ft. White.) Alltel is the only service we've tried thus far, so we can't compare it with another carrier. Regardless of the phone model (we've had three in the past five years), the reception is either excellent or pitiful, depending on location. Lots of dropped calls, too many dead spots. Reception quality varies enormously within quarter-mile increments -- you can be having a very clear conversation one moment, then your call is dropped the next moment. Worst reception seems to be in northwest Alachua County, which is ironic because Alltel monopolizes the landlines out here. You'd hope that, because they have residential revenues supporting their rural landline network, they'd target the same demographic for their cellular service. Not. We'll be changing plans this week, only because we're not getting the area coverage we need.

Best reception of any phone I've used (T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon).