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Sprint coverage inside Iowa City is great. I work in the basement of a research building at the Medical School, and I get a great signal.

When I first came to Iowa City I had some problems so I took my phone into the Sprint store. They told me that my antenna in the my phone broke and they gave me a new one for free. Since then I have never dropped a call or even had bad service. I don't even get the voicemail notification without getting a call first. Life is great on Sprint PCS.

I reviewed Verizon on Oct. 29, 2005. At that point, I had an occasional call go to voice mail (in an area with good signal strength, and clear calls), and when moving around would hear the occasional sound drop from a cell handoff or whatever. Around December Verizon must have done some tweaks around here.. no calls going to VM anymore, and calls now have no handoff sounds, and in fact sound perfect. The low signal spots I had before are still low, but calls now sound clear anyway. I brought up my phones debug screen, and now a phone call can use 2, 3, or 4 cells at once sometimes to keep the call clear, versus before always using 1.

5 bars in almost everywhere in Iowa City / Coralville area.

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.

Signal strength ranges between 2-5 bars... but I'm always able to make calls without any issues. I get a dropped maybe once every other month... so, it's rare. Would go with Verizon again because their signal strength seems to be best of the major carriers (Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile) in Iowa City.

Reception actually vaires between 2 to 5 bars. I very rarely have dropped or missed calls. When I do, I am usually in a big building or basement and I don't expect any other carrier to be better in those situations.

Works well in all parts of Iowa City except hospital buildings and basements of large buildings.

I'm the same dude who wrote about Cingular at Bon Aire on April 17, 2005.. Cingular now has dropped TDMA usage for phones like the S46. Due to Cingular's low coverage outside of town with a GSM-only phone, I dropped Cingular and now have Verizon. In town, I haven't hit any dead spots yet. The number of bars fluctuates around more with Verizon compared to Cingular outside, but since Verizon is 850mhz instead of 1900mhz, going inside most buildings doesn't knock off bars. In my friend's steel-reinforced-concrete building (in University Heights) I get 2 bars in most spots, with a few individual spots at 1 bar. At the friends house out of town, I get 2 bars instead of 1.. In SW Wisconsin where Cingular just wouldn't work on a GSM-only plan, Verizon gets continuous coverage (roaming off US-Cellular I think.. but roaming is free so that's fine by me.) In the past I hadn't considered Verizon because it was too expensive, but Cingular has raised their rates so they are at least as high as Verizon's... I'd give Verizon "5 - Perfect" but I had 1 or 2 outgoing calls that were very slow to connect (like 15 second delay before the 1st ring) and have had 1 incoming call go straight to voice mail, so I wonder if there aren't intermittent capacity problems.

I've never had a problem with my phone reception. I usually have 2 or 3 bars inside my apartment. I get 4-5 bars around town and in my office on Madison st.