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Coverage is fine if you're outdoors all over town. Once you're on a bus or in a building it's all down hill, including terrible data service performance.

Had AT&T in Iowa City / Coralville area for 4 years and usually always have coverage. The coverage also has gotten ALOT better over those 4 years. Most always it is at 3+ bars with 3G.

My son gave me his old iPhone 3G Coverage has been 1 bar to no service. Cancelled plan! My Verizon flip phone has never dropped a call in Iowa City. In fact we have even gotten coverage in the arrowhead of MN on Lake Superior. Anxiously waiting for Verizon to start carrying the iPhone !

If reception was consistently bad it would be far less frustrating. AT&T are geniuses at providing tantalizing service (occasionally excellent, then none even when you put the phone in one place and use as a speakerphone.) Would get iPhone / AT&T only if the phone feature is not important.

Reception varies, never good. tried booster, still no help. company talk about improved reception in spring, 2010. It's mid-June and no improvement.

Poorest, most frustrating phone service I have ever had. My boyfriend and I are on a family plan and can hardly ever talk to each other. Our calls never go directly thru but go to Voice mail. And then it can take anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days to get a message that we have new voice mail. Cannot use the phone in my house, and sometimes not even on my street, and I live on top of a hill "Summit St." Occasionally I get calls to go thru at work out on the west end of town. If you live in IOwa City, don't go with AT and T, a big waste of money!

It seems to have gotten worse in the last month. Now signal is completely lost in many areas between Iowa City and North Liberty. I have friends who have moved to Verizon and it solved the problem. Unfortunately, can't move with the iPhone though.

Frequently drop calls in town. No reception in certain areas I regularly travel to and from work. No reception in areas of Cedar Rapids. Several "dead spots". Go with someone else.

Seem to be between towers. 1Bar then 4 bars then back to one. Garbled voice then perfect. We need more towers in Iowa City. All AT&T users should complain. I know its a pain in the A&& but they need to hear it from their users.

I have traveled throughout the US using two different Cingular / AT&t phones. Their service is at best frustrating. I would never go with them again. There are massive dead spots throughout Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota (esp. the Twin Cities), DC, Boston and New York. You would think that in the most populace parts of the country the company would be aggressive with ensuring coverage. No such luck. Look forward to either no reception or constant dropped calls-in the network that they claim have the least dropped calls. If this is true, I will be available only via email from now on.

If you would like to waste $70 a month, go with Cingular, now AT&T. In my apartment on Broadway I have used two phones, one being an older Nokia, and another a newer Motorola. Neither of them work. Most of the time there is not even enough reception for incoming calls to ring and the rest of the time they are dropped anyway within seconds. I really enjoy the convenience that cell phones offer-getting to stand outside to get enough reception during conversations is simply wonderful. Do not waste your time with this company. They drop calls everywhere!

Coverage is horrible in our house and spotty around the city and state. As long as you're on a MAJOR highway the coverage is good. I hate the inconsistency.

Very bad reception. No signal at all inside my apartment. Outside I can at least make the call, but I can barely hear the other person talking and they break up. I cant even receive calls when at my apartment, its ridiculous.

Really bad in the valley! Only 1-2 bars most times. Incoming calls almost impossible. Outgoing just as bad. Have to walk to the end of the road to get any sustained signal strong enough to maintain. Luckily it's not my main line but I was hoping to make it so! Elsewhere very good, 3-5bars rest of the city.

My phone is brand new, replacing an AT&T Ericsson T60D with an S710A and the required shift to Cingular. Phone reception is poor inside and out. Voice drops out repeatedly during phone calls, and severe echoing is common. Reception is clearly worse than the old phone and AT&T. The store said I was holding the phone incorrectly and should swivel it closed to talk and make certain I don't cover the area around the camera lens with my hand because that's where the antennae is located. Sounded dubious to me but I tried it and it made no difference whatever. I asked if it would be better to exchange the phone for one with an external antennae. The store said no, the S710A has the best reception of their models and that the area I live at has a strong GSM signal. It is often a 1 but sometimes 2 or three bars, and rarely four. I have had the same problems driving in Coralville and at work in South Iowa City. It's a wonderful phone except for phone calls. Also, the phone numbers ported over from the old phone can not be selected by first name order, only last name order. I called Ericsson about this and they said there is nothing that can be done about it it that is the way they were ported from the old phone except for manually editing each name. The store says they can't port them over in any other order even though they were listed in first name order on the old phone. New entries are recongized by first name if that order is selected on the phone menus. But I'm out of luck on the 490 names ported over from the old phone. They can only be selected by last name. I am seriously considering returning my phone and taking a look at Verizon and an external antennae to see if it's any better. I have one month from purchase to return the phone. I don't know if I can get out of the Cingular plan or not.

This was originally Suncom TDMA system, then AT&T TDMA.. GSM was added a few years ago... now it's Cingular (IMHO probably a good purchase, since Cingular is also a TDMA going to GSM provider..). The S46 I have now does GSM but falls back to TDMA if there's no GSM around. That said, the only time I need this fallback is visiting relatives in Dodgeville, WI.. GSM is non-existent in SW Wisconsin; even the TDMA is really spotty. In town I get very good coverage and reliability. Usually have a 4 bar signal (out of 5.) A few areas can get down to 2 bars, but this still provides a distorition-free call. A friend's place is built from steel-reinforced concrete, and has lots of computer racks etc. in it -- the phone used to be 1 bar in there and get distortions and dropouts ("I can't hear you? What?"), but now shows 1-2 and sounds normal (I think a new tower was brought online somewhere..) Immeditately outside this building I'll get a 4-bar signal 8-). At a friends about 20 miles out of town, the phone I used to have (Nokia 5165) *used* to fall back to US Cellular, but later on did not.. they have been filling out gaps in coverage over time. It's like 2 bars outside, and 1 inside though. I get low but useable strength on my S46 too. Coverage is seemless along Interstates, and pretty good even out in the sticks. Out in the sticks, the cells are far enough apart the signal will drop to 1 bar at the low points (between hills 8-), but doesn't actually drop to 0 and loose your call.