Although I generally have great reception, I often can't make a call the first try. I rarely have dropped calls, but when speaking with another cell phone we never know who's service dropped the call. Others are often unable to leave me a message, which is the worst because I use my phone for business.

Usually get great reception in Gainesville (great everywhere I've been in the country), BUT... In Gainesville the network is always busy between classes and at big events. Often times randomly in neither of the above cases. It got better in past year or two, but still sub-par. This phone is fantastic though. Not a lot of high tech features, but works well and it's a TANK. Cingular / AT&T STILL needs more capacity in G-ville.

Reception very poor my area, in my house especially. Dead Zone on NW 8th Ave., Royal Park Area, much of UF Campus Basically, really bad. I only stick with them because of the iPhone. I do not understand how their service can be so poor given the number of towers in the immediate area.

I live at Windmeadows apartments (just north of Butler plaza), and I get 0 to 1 bars in my apartment with calls dropped after about 3 minutes on average. I constantly miss calls, and sometimes it can take 4-5 minutes to get the reception just to make a call. Going outside sometimes pushes me up to 2 bars, but doesn't help much. Very bad service all over Gainesville as a whole also. Thought the problem was the phone, so I tried 3 different phones. None of them made a bit of difference. All my friends who have Sprint have horrible reception. I had Cingular for 3 years in Gainesville prior to this, and in my experience Cingular was about 1000x better than Sprint. DO NOT BUY SPRINT IN GAINESVILLE.

Zero bars indoors, One bar outdoors

Have had minimal problems with signal strength / dropped calls / network busy signals. Wanted to switch to Cingular for the iphone but after talking to people with Cingular I think I'll stay with verizon. One dead spot is at 39th / I75.

I was surprised to read so many bad reports with other providers, but I do agree with all the reviews of Alltel. I'm guessing there aren't as many Alltel reviews here because nobody is having any bad reception problems and looking for websites to write reviews but I found this site shopping around and wanted to share my experience. Great service all over, I never get a 'network busy' messages or dropped calls as reported by others with Cingular, I can use my phone whenever, all over the area. I'm not sure how they do it placing towers, but signal is always at full signal, 5 bars outside and might drop down one to 4 bars inside usually. But I can make or receive calls wherever, whenever. No problems when UF is having a big event, no problems at the mall, hospital, walmart, any residential areas I've been to, or anywhere else I visit. If coverage is most important and you don't want to be missing any calls, I would definitely recommend Alltel to others. I've been impressed with service here since I signed up several months ago.

I can't stand the poor phone selection from Alltel, BUT the phones work. I rarely have a call dropped. Even though they don't have the greatest selection of the newest gizmo phones--you can actually use a phone for what it supposed to be used for--talking and making calls. I highly recommend Alltel in gainesville. And for our trip to California this summer--we had phone reception everywhere except the boonies of Nevada. We even made calls in the Grand Canyon!

False. 4 to 5 bars no matter where I go... .upgrade your old v-series motorolas before saying anything.

I switched from Verizon to Cingular, deferring to my husband's service (newly married). I went against my better judgment and Cingular has proven me right. I hate this service - never know when I'll get reception. I can sit in my office and have 5 bars one second and no bars the next. I'll suffer through this for my hubby's sake but when contract renewal time comes around I'm insisting we go back to Verizon!

Almost no reception when indoors in this area. Even outdoors, the coverage is poor. I have called T-Mobile and they say this area is a known weak signal geographic region. No plans for improvement.

Horrible reception, I drop so many calls, if, on the rare chance, that I am lucky enough to get through in the first place. I have a razr, but it's the same on every other kind of phone with Cingular in gainesville

Cingular is absolutely no good in Gainesville, Fla. No matter where I go no reception or at the best very poor reception. I go to the Cingular store, have a sim card replaced, they tell me that my phone is the problem. well I have friends with Motorola Razr's, they have the same problem as I do. Cingular may have towers in Gainesvill, Fla, but I question whether they work or not. Today at 11:00 AM, my friend and I was on NE 2nd Street, talking about Cingular and comparing phone signals, I had 2 1 / 2 bars on mine and he had 4 bars on his,we both made a 45 degree turn to look at something and we both lost two bars of signal. I am along with countless others in Gainesville are paying for a service that we are not receiving. Maybe we need to combine forces and bring a class action lawsuit against them, for not providing the service, that we are paying them to provide for us.

I was in Gainesville recently touring the UF campus and at a football game. I was very happy with Alltel's reception in the area. I had heard this was a problem area for some carriers but the coverage was great. I had no problem placing a call at any time and I don't remember ever dropping below 4 / 5 bars anywhere around Gainesville while going out to eat and shop in the city. I stayed on 5 / 5 bars throughout the campus, even indoors I only noticed a drop to 3 / 5 bars one time but there was generally no drop at all. Very good indoor coverage and the call quality was very clear. This must be a strong area for Alltel as far as coverage goes. I was impressed and would not hesitate to recommend them to others.

Cingular drops an incredible amount of phone calls, that is, if you are lucky enough to actually get throught. I have also had to get in my car just to make or receive a phone call, but it will still drop the call eventually. Customer service is typical, I have replaced the perfectly good old phone with a new one, just because that was all Cingular could do to help me with the situation. The customer service reps are all very nice and friendly, but the company is SEVERELY LACKING. I am so frustrated with Cingular that I am willing to pay the cancellation fee and switch to ANYTHING ELSE just to not give them another dime. When I have gone to the stores for this matter, there are also at least a couple of other customers with the same issue, the reps say that Cingular is "working on the problem," but its been months, and CINGULAR IS DOING NOTHING to help thier customers out as far as I can tell.

Cingular has virtually no reception in Gainesville. "We bleed orange and blue too?" No way. Everyone with Cingular in Gainesville have nothing good to say about its service. "Fewest dropped calls?" Not in Gainesville. The network is constantly busy, taking up to 15 attempts to make a call. Thats if you don't give up after many failed attempts. Its just frustrating. Cingular is a waste of time and money.

The reception is terrible! 99% of the time I get messages saying "network busy" or "channel unavailable" when I try to make calls. When people try to call me all they get is my voicemail which doesn't help because I cant even reach my voicemail to listen to the messages! I go outside to make calls because it is a little better, but usually I end up giving up and using my roomate's phone( she has Verizon) because my calls disconnect every 2 minutes even if I don't move an inch. I called customer service before and they sent me updates to my phone which should make my phone work better, but I think it made it worse. I seriously dread making phone calls now and people don't want to call me anymore because they know the only conversation we can have is " Can you still hear me?" "Are you still there?" When I lived in South Florida Cingular was much better there. I can't wait until my contract runs out in April.

Constantly switches from full bars to no bars. 9 out of 10 call attempts end up in "network busy." 9 out of 10 conversations are dropped. 9 out of 10 calls go straight to voicemail... phone never rings. Have to walk outside of apartment and drive somewhere else to talk. It has been getting worse over the past few months. Totally ridiculous... it's 2006, fellas... come on. Can we get out of our contracts because of this? Or we just get screwed like always?

Cingular has told me that they had three towers in my area that were under repair and would be fixed soon. That was over a month ago. Nothing has changed and "dropped calls" are a given. My neighbor with Cingular has to walk out to the street to get a connection. According to my neighbor, Cingular is the joke on campus. I hope to have them in my past soon.

Cingular is horrible. On a map you can see that most of the cell towers in Gainesville area are owned by Cingular / AT&T, but every other service works better on the towers. At the last 3 places I've lived in town the service was unattainable- It was really common for me to take a long walk or drive just to get messages and return calls. The first of those places was less than 300 yards from a Cingular tower. The second was line of sight with a Cingular tower on the nearest tall building. The third was right near campus and would have a perfect signal all day long but I could never send a call, got alot of fast-busys, many missed calls and delayed messages, and I would actually get crosstalk like with a land line that's miswired. At my new location service is slightly better (not as bad as campus or SW 23rd st), but every day I lose service completele for about 2-3 hours intermittently. The phone will go from 5 bars to 0 and the phone cannot even call 911. I have had 3 phone models- 1st was replaced 5 times, 2nd was replaced 8 times, 3rd is on it's 3rd replacement. Full coverage and signal but constant "network busy". Tower routers have actually caused my phones to not be able to hang up on calls- I have turned a phone off by pulling the battery and when it powered back up the call was still on the line and my friends line wasn't letting them hang up either. Dr.5 miles in any direction out of town and you will have perfect service, even in the middle of a swamp. Dr.across NW 16th ave towards 8th Ave and you will lose every call- EVERY CALL in that spot gets dropped no matter what, but you will have a full signal the whole time. Cingular needs to hire a couple of tower technicians because it seems they are just putting these things up and equipping them with the weakest, cheapest, most ineffective networking hardware available. If you report exact locations of dropped calls, dead spots, or just randomly f'd up stuff you will be snubbed- CSRs wont even write down the information that you give them. DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY WITH CINGULAR- the only service that will drop your calls, messages, and even your phones IMEI number from their database.