I am a driver that covers all of Northwest Michigan including Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee, Charlevoix, Wexford, Antrim, Kalkaska, and Grand Traverse counties. Cellone has pretty decent coverage - though there are a few holes in rural areas and some frustrating "tower overlaps" in the TC area where you will drop a call while driving even though you can see an AT&T tower.

Great service all over NMC Campus and Maritime Campus, some issues in the larger buildings, used to have issues with Nextel and Verizon in this area Sprint is much better as a national carrier

Barely 1 bar on a good day, Sprint has not added towers in Traverse City area for a long time... ... Incidentally, I work in the tower building business, Verizon Wireless is building Towers and putting antennas up in Blair Township

I demo'd cellular phones from T-Mobile, CellularOne, Sprint and Alltel. Alltel was the only phone that held a usuable signal along most of the West Silver Lake area. I have enjoyed connections in most of the contiguous U.S. with Alltel. Not always great service, but it has worked better overall than my previous carrier CellularOne...

Verizon has no service in this area. I'll believe the reviews here that Alltel is a service to look into. I used Alltel in North Carolina for a year and it was adequate service with some dropped calls but usable over all. Verizon is not the provider to consider in West Michigan.

Verizon sold me the blackberry after I told them I was going to be in Traverse City a lot. I've been scammed. The 7250 has limited call life when out of network and consistantly drops calls, fails to receive messages and is generally unusable in this region. Verizon knew this and still sold me the phone. I understand that Alltel is much better in this region and I will have to bite the bullet and start another contract with Alltel if Verizon will not disconnect service. Tough business lesson I didn't need.

Just returned from a two week vacation in the Traverse City area, which turned out to be a vacation from my cell phone as well. I have SPRINT service and after this vacation, I am looking into switching providers. No reception in our hotel (Days Inn Traverse City), limited reception along the downtown waterfront in TC- many "lost signal" calls.. No reception along US-31 North or South. If I was able to place a call, the person on the other end was not able to hear me. Very frustrating. Disappointed in the service.

Good and getting better, cell one had some rough spots following the aquisition of NPI, but they are getting it together.

Alltel works pretty well in downtown Traverse City and the surrounding area. Have had a dropped call now and then, but coverage is quite good--reception can have static, but don't know if that is because of the phone (the basic Alltel Nokia phone). Have been able to use the phone to send and receive calls throughout lower Michigan (Grand Rapids, Holland, Lansing, Flint, Ann Arbor, etc.) without problems. Also have used it on major north south highways in Indiana and Ohio.

Cellular One is the worst! Customer service is poor at best. The people that work at Cellular One are rude. The company knows about dropped calls and no service in complete townships.