Since my November review, we have been told by a Cingular / AT&T customer service rep. that one of the towers in our area is "severely degraded". This is apparantly the reason for our extremely unreliable service. Since that time, it does not appear that any effort has been made to fix the tower. Our call reliability was once excellent but has continued to steadily worsen. Regardless of the number of bars we get (and it fluctuates widely - from 5 to 0, to 3, to 1... -- all within a period of a few minutes), the only constant is that almost every call drops the signal at some point, either on the caller or the receiver's end. In fact the conversations are exactly as depicted in the Cingular commercials! Extraordinarily frustrating! We have had enough and are actively seeking another service provider.

very poor reception in this area. will not work inside and sometimes not even outside.

I'm not sure why everyone else has been writing with 1s and 2s for reception for Verizon Wireless in the Silver Spring area. I suspect that it may have to do with inferior phone models. I have never had less than 4 bars anywhere in Silver Spring, even in the basement garage of my apartment building with a Motorola E815. Driving around the Washington Metro area, I never have less than 4 bars anywhere, even anywhere on the Beltway. Just my 2 cents.

Signal goes in and out, most calls are dropped. Bad reception. Even outside the apt, it is iffy.

I've lived in a top-floor and a bottom-floor apartment in this area. Reception on the top floor is perfect; on the bottom floor was marginal. On the bottom floor, and in the basement of my current apartment, calls would simply drop if I went into the hallway. I've never had a problem with reception outside, however.

Been with Sprint for 5 years -- never experience dropped calls. Reception is so-so in some areas but I can always get through. Phone has terrible sound -- used to think it was the reception but come to find out, it's my phone. I wish you test out phone sound before you buy.

I am a former AT&T customer who was switched to Cingular when the companies joined. Previously, I was very happy with reception in and around my house and around the area (4 or 5 bars almost all the time - even walking along the edge of Rock Creek Park) -- until Cingular began its "fewest dropped calls" ad. Ever since then, we've had very frequent dropped calls and MANY one-way calls (where EITHER we can hear the caller OR the caller can hear us!) Don't know what the problem is, but we are becoming very frustrated. Perhaps a tower has been removed.

I am using Sprint phone for the last 4 years and live by Leasure World. Very sad when a company promises to put tower and never does. Reception is always poor.

We moved into Leisure World with Sprint service and found we generally have 1 bar of reception. My plan is old, phone broke, so we went to Simply Wireless in Wheaton Plaza and they helped us locate a provider with better reception from our home, which is where we mostly use the phone. Despite the coverage map we were shown, T-Mobile has fully 5 bars in our location. Great!

Just switched from my AT&T phone to Cingular, which they promised would improve reception and call quality. Nope--there are still nany dead spots in my house; I often can hear the caller, but they can't hear me. Going into the front yard is my only option--the backyard reception is awful too.

Since July 20, 2006, NO coverage on my side of the street (parallel to Sligo Creek). Prior to that (since I moved here 2003), strong coverage. Multiple calls for network investigation -- nada. Cingular sux.

spotty in rambler sometimes we have to go outside to get good signal

I like Sprint PCS reception, but not in my neighborhood. The reception is very poor. My wife still persists with Sprint, but I switched to Cingular which has good reception in that neighborhood. If Sprint builds tower in my area, there are a number of people who will switch to it.

Obviously, Nextel knows that it is a dying company. Very poor reception, messages show up after days and truly such an useless cell phone system.

I switched from AT&T to Cingular a bit over a month ago, and got a new phone that I'm very happy with, but it was a total disaster when it came to cell coverage. Driving from Silver Spring around the western beltway to I-95 S and ultimately south to Richmond, it's pretty hard to maintain a conversation for more than 5-10 minutes at a time virtually anywhere along the entire route. Now, I just got off the phone with Cingular and I have moderate good news: the representative spoke with a supervisor, who verified that they do in fact have low coverage around the western part of the beltway, and they agreed to waive my termination fee. (I had argued that their sales rep sold me a product that doesn't deliver what they said it would, and I made it clear that I was prepared to document all my dropouts for a week or two and then dispute all charges on my account.) The rep was actually very apologetic, but she also said explicitly that it will be at least months before they get enough new towers in place in my area for it to make a difference to me. She also told me that she could not switch me back to AT&T because they were phasing it out. So, bottom line: I think (and the company itself more or less verified) that Cingular is virtually worthless if what you want to do is talk on the phone on the western Beltway and down I-95 South toward Richmond. (Yes, I use a hands free set and I drive very carefully, with a lot of follow distance!) However, I was lucky enough (or had chutzpah enough) to get them to waive my early termination fee. Now I just need to figure out which other provider is the best one to switch to, because I don't want to go through all this again. Wish I could have my AT&T back, sigh...

Cingular has decent reception in this area at times. It tends to get overloaded at times and calls will not go through or come in. Additionally, the service is hit or miss. Sometimes there is a delay in receiving a voicemail notification. Also, the service is very temperamental as you start traveling around, working in some places and not in others. Overall the signal strennth is not very strong anywhere (even though my phone indicates that it is). The service is mediocre at best, and I would npt conitnue on with them if it were not for the fact that they use GSM technology, and this saves me money when I am traveling outside the USA.

Occasionally good enough to carry on a simple conversation upstairs, but often no reception at all in the basement. Sometimes it works a little better on the front porch.

Typically, the phone only has a one to two bar connection (both inside and outside) and the calls eventually end up being dropped. I've noticed Cingular generally has poor coverage around DC altogether, though, the phone seems to work great in Scottsdale, AZ.

I never had coverage issues in the past. Recently service is not available. What happened?

On the beltway around Greenbelt heading toward Baltimore coming from AAFB, the call always gets muddled and then drops. Nextel suggests bringing the phone in for a diagnostic test, but never admits fault with their service area.