Never Go With Cricket Because They Drop Calls All The Time, Phones Fade In and Out, Internet Only Works When You Use Your Wifi / Wireless Internet. I STRONGLY ADVISE YOU TO NEVER GET CRICKET.THE ONLY THING THAT THEY DO IS GIVE YOU THOSE PROMO TO BRING YOU BACK.ANTI-CRICKETCO.

I just moved from Los Angeles and thought it was bad. This is redic! 4-5 dropped calls a day!

Terrible reception anywhere near where I live, near western and grand up to north. AT&T is awful and expensive. They offered to sell me a modem to improve reception. Why should I have to pay them to provide me service I am already paying $225 (family plan with unlimited data and texting) a month for? Their service is so bad I have to have a land line. Insane! I am switching to Sprint or Verizon...

T-Mobile is AMAZING in this area. All bars, ALL the time. I had to leave AT&T because of poor service in the area. I recommended to anybody. 4G service is excellent

Absolutely AWFUL coverage by ATT in downtown Chicago. I literally walk outside my building, up Wacker Dr.and across the river to the Merch Mart and get no service - zip - zilch - nothing. I'm wide out in the open with hundreds of thousands of people and there's no service. Once I get 3G on my phone I have to sit and wait until I get away from downtown before it actually works. On the 26th floor of my office building it constantly goes from 4 bars 3G to No Service to 1 bar E to a combo of them both, then searches then starts all over every minute. I can't actually use the phone for anything because it won't pick up a signal for more than 10 seconds before dropping it for another.

I have been without 3G service for a week. All AT&T says is "we're aware there is a problem and we are working on it. We don't know when it will be resolved." I guess it will be resolved when they merge with T-Mobile in 2012. Bye bye AT&T. You suck.

Nextel / Sprint network sucks! No reception east of the Ryan / Kennedy!

SPRINT SUCKS ASS. They have not been upfront with customers about the outages in the Chicago area and nationwide. There should be a class action suit on its way for charging customers for service that it does not deliver. Ever since I switched to Sprint in 2010 the data service has gone from good to AWFUL. I had NO data service in Chicago all day today and extremely slow (under 0.0 - 0.25mbps on 3G). HORRIBLE. Shame on you SPRINT for taking people's money then lying to the people who put you where you are. #3 in the nation. woo- hoo. BTW, you should really do something about the morons you employ in your corporate stores. They know nothing about outages in the area. Oh, and when you do ask them they say 'I don't really care how fast MY phone is'! Seriously, I got this response from an employee. These are dudes who like technology, NOT customer service people. They are often uncouth and have ZERO interpersonal skills. Really? Dumb dumb dumb move Sprint. They are your first line and direct link to your customers. BAAADDD impression. Though I can't fault them, they're just selling phones, right?

I recently made a google talk account so I wouldn't have to put up with the dropped calls from my blackberry. "Can you hear me now... ? Good."

Verizon sucks here in chicago you 2 or 3 lines of your reception,

AT&T sucks my balls. Sorry for the language, but this has been HORRIBLE for over a year now. Constantly dropped calls -- I mean like 5-10 per day. EVEN DOWNTOWN, on Michigan Ave, of all places, or in the business district, the phone will read 4bars and drop calls repeatedly... OR... there's zero signal. How is that ok? Customer service apologizes, sometimes refunds part of a bill, "pings" our phones to try to correct issues, and IT NEVER GETS BETTER. They always say "there's a tower down in your area, we're working on getting it back up"... = "We're hoping to buy TMobile to give us the coverage we SHOULD have, so we're waiting to see if that deal goes through". Guess what?... that merger won't happen, if approved, until well into 2012. I've had enough, and am now leaving AT&T, even if it means paying to get out of my contract. It is RIDICULOUS to me that we've been paying $215+ / per month for two iphones on a family plan. Sprint now has the iPhone and has cheaper plans, and one can unlock the iPhone and go to TMobile. Why would anyone in Chicago have AT&T? NO F-ing IDEA.

My wife and I had to unlock our iPhones and switch to T-Mobile because our AT&T reception was so terrible. We could barely make a call from our place and I loathed the thought of getting a land-line. So we worked a deal with T-Mobile and have been with them for two years now. There customer service is really great. AT&T was pretty poor for a while but I noticed it getting better right before we switched carriers. T-Mobile's coverage in my area is pretty good, not perfect, but waaaay better than AT&T. The only problem is the EDGE is pretty slow. I would definitely stay away from AT&T in the North Center area though - it is some sort of freak dead zone and it's just maddening. I'm done with the slow EDGE though on my iPhone and will be switching to either Verizon or Sprint (leaning towards Sprint).

AT&T provides almost no ability to make calls from within the house. From outside, it works alright (weak signal) from many places, but there are a few corners and neighborhood spots where the call will always drop. Have submitted numerous reports to AT&T using their iPhone app for dropped calls, poor reception, slow data, etc. No improvement over 3 years. They offered to sell me a mini-cell for about $99 that would allow me to generate a mini tower in the house using my own Internet connection. Have decided to switch to another carrier, Verizon or Sprint (if they announce that they'll carry the iPhone after 10 / 3 / 11).

M becoming mad after moving into this building!

It was really difficult to make a decision on reception rating. My Iphone original's reception is really good (upto 4~5 bar) as long as I leave my balcony door open, either little bit or wide. However, the reception drops to 1 bar or No Service at all if I close the balcony door. BTW, I live on 49th floor.

I love Virgin Mobile! Service everywhere! My family has T-Mobile and they can't get service in the CTA Subway Red Line! My service at home great with 5 bars sometimes 6

The service in the area is awful. Don't bother trying to talk on the phone inside, because even if you manage to start a conversation, you'll rarely get a chance to get too far into it. What makes this bad service issue worse is that AT&T lies to customers by showing the innaccurate maps that say this area receives the best service available. After hours speaking with reps on the phone I found out that they actually have their own map that they don't show customers. This map shows that the Ravenswood area is a "dead zone" (an AT&T reps own words). If you are moving to Chicago, or are getting phone service in Chicago, absolutely do not go with AT&T unless you enjoy being frustrated and listening to mindless music while on hold.

I receive little to no reception from AT&T unless I'm in the loop. I just keep complaining and I've been getting my service for free. Everybody should do the same.

More often than not there is no sound upon connection, or the sound disappears several minutes into a conversation. ATT technicians were able to reproduce the issue, confirmed that the phones themselves are OK (all of my family's phones are having these problems), and admitted that there is nothing that ATT can do about it. Apparently, there are too many customers and not enough network capacity. ATT should not be allowed to advertise and sell service, which it cannot provide.

AT&T should not be allowed to sell any new phones in Chicago until it begins to provide something like the services it promises. Their network is saturated, they simply cannot provide service to additional people, and it would be appropriate for the state attorney general to step in on this one, along with the FCC.