"downtown" northfield gets half decent service from Verizon and Sprint, but you need GSM for good reception, especially North of town towards the (ex) NMH campus. Most signal comes from towers meant to cover rt. 91. Unicel and Cingular are really the best options for Brattleboro / Keene / Greenfield rural areas, also true with Rt. 2 towards Boston, which still has lousy coverage with large gaps even with GSM until past Gardner. Verizon has no service between Gardner and Greenfield on Rt. 2 as of 1 / 06. Winchester, NH is a signal hole (a very poor town probably not seen as profitable), but southern NH and VT have at least spotty GSM coverage now, which is much better than even 3-4 years ago when my first Cingular TDMA phone only had service while on the highway or in "downtown" areas. The skiing areas of VT should have pretty good coverage from most providers soon enough, and route 91 is reasonably covered by GSM until the canadian border.