Service is completely variable. At times I get 4 bars, but cannot move because it sharply drops to 1 or no bars. From time to time I cannot connect any calls no matter how many bars the phone shows. A friend of mine who lives a mile or so down the road experiences the exact same problem. If you live in Westport, Nextel is just a bad idea. Not to mention it drops my calls all over route 195 in certain locations. Just a headache. Searching for something new.

To my surprise, Cingular now appears to be offering signal in my area. Earlier I had posted a message saying that only T-Mobile provided reliable service at my home in Westport. Actually AT&T has signal, but it never seemed to be better than T-Mobile. Following the merger with Cingular, I found (on a phone I borrowed) that Cingular has signal which is nearly full all the time. The phone display shows "Cingular Extend" and I take that to mean roaming on an AT&T or other partnered tower. One test call went through quickly and sound quality was decent. I think the phone maker was Nokia. I prefer Motorola and Samsung products, but did not have any available for testing. I may now switch from T-Mobile to Cingular because they seem (and claim) to have service in areas where T-Mobile does not. The jury is still out.

T-Mobile (GSM) is the only carrier that actually delivered on its promise to have signal where I live. In fact, I didn't believe the salesperson when I was told that coverage was available. This is likely because most other companies promise and don't deliver. I have had 2 occasion where system was off-line and there was no service. In each of these cases, service returned within a few hours, but the downtime was never explained by T-Mobile. My area is horrible under Verizon and spotty with Sprint. Cingular says there is no signal on their network now, and I am about to give an AT&T GSM plan using the Motorola V505 a test run this coming week. It would be so much easier if there was an actual committment to service rural areas from all the major service providers.