This is a bad area for cell phone use... While there are "5 bars" on the display, I get dropped calls all the time. Sometimes I will try and try for 20 minutes to make a call from my home upstairs, then go downstairs and have no problems at all. I use AT&T because its cheap. Also, I would NOT recommend the Samsung SGH-A707, IMO it is a crappy product. Thanks

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.

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!

Good reception around my house. No reception in Rock Creek Park. Have lost calls in various places in and around the DC area with frustrating frequency. Voice mail notifications come sometimes days later. Won't work in many buildings. Rarely works below ground. Going back to Verizon soon.

Great coverage indoors too - no problems at all. Unfortunately I just cancelled insurance coverage on my Sprint phone and lost it - so now must deal with possibly switching carriers - as I prefer a prepaid plan.

better than it used to be - fewer dropped calls in the past several months

At the house, good reception inside (except basement), outside very strong signal. Previously used ATT TDMA, did not work well inside, had to go outside near the street to make a call.

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.

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.