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Reception is poor almost everywhere in the Flathead valley. Never get more than 2 bars and mostly get 1 bar. When I put the phone up to my ear, NO BARS! Had an Alltel phone for 4 years previously, and had same poor reception. Guess it's just the valley. Verizon phone worked perfect in Vegas..

discount all the time sittting still. Talked and talked to Verzon. Looking to change service

Happy Valley between Kalispell and Whitefish. Any inbound or outbound call starts with one bar at best and always drops, even standing still. Ever since Alltel bought out Cellone it appears that there is no longer tower sharing. Phone performance througout western MT is definately worse than a couple years ago.

West of town I don't know of any phones that get very good reception! Looking for a good carrier that will work in west Kalispell / Kila area. Enough people live out this way, you'd think they'd get more towers up!

I would definitely recommend Verizon. So would many of the Alltel users (I asked when wondering if I should renew my contract when I first moved out here). I love my phone. It gets great coverage. I definitely don't have any complaints. I had to sit on the phone with a Verizon representative for an hour in hopes of figuring out how to make my phone sync music to it from my computer and he was extremely nice about it. I say Verizon has awesome customer service. I had Cingular, T-Mobile, and Sprint when I lived out of the state and I would say that Verizon has the best customer service hands down. I have been with Verizon for the past year and a half and couldn't be happier.

I would definitely reccomend Verizon Wireless. I've had nothing but a great experiance with them. I recently switched from Alltel after defective phones, broken promises, billing problems, and many many dropped calles at home in Evergreen. Verizon Wirelss on the other hand has been great for me. No dropped calls, great customer service, phone works great (Motorlola E815) and plus, No roaming, so I get to use both Verizon's and Alltel's network free. P.S. LG phones seem to get worse reception, than Motorola and Nokia phones.

Verizon Wireless blows all other competition out of the water. Year after year they are awarded with the best coverage in the state of MT. There are a couple things to note, bars on the phone don't actually correlate to coverage on a CDMA system. That's an advertising gimmick used by other carriers ie: Cingular. They are actually more of an indication of capacity. Also, each phone has a different transciever. If you are complaining about indoor coverage and you have an LG there is a reason... I've used my phone in all stores mentioned below with no problems...

Verizon works great in Kalispell, with a few exeptions, such as stores north of town, aka target, borders, costco. but Alltel doesn't work that great in them either. I would recommend Verizon Wireless because their phone selection is better, better customer service, and network reliability seems better. It just seems like they care about their customers more than Alltel does. At Alltel you always have to wait forever at the store to get some help. Verizon takes much less time to be able to talk to someone

Network Reliability is better than Alltels. I've been with both companys, and Verizon holds the edge in this category, your phone won't do all the jumping around (such as from digital to analog then to roaming) like in certain areas of Alltel's Network. I prefer Verizon because of this.

Great reception with Verizon in Evergreen. No dropped calls, great clarity, everything works great, and their customer service is great. I also love their selection of phones. I wouldn't recommend going with Cellularone / Alltel because their customer service is extremely bad, and they wouldn't do anything for their customers.

Well, I've been with Verizon in Montana traveling between Missoula and Kalispell for almost two years and despite promises at sign-up, the coverage hasn't improved significantly in Kalispell. They've added two token towers, and it greatly improved coverage at one friend's house - who lives on a 5 acre ranch miles north of town. But the areas of new development and the community college, etc haven't improved. They've got much worse. What's more, Verizon's customer service which was once excellent no longer gives a darn. The store in Kalispell is under new management and is as a whole rather unfriendly. Alltel (was Western Wireless / CellularONE) hasn't improved any from what I've seen, they're still rude and their coverage is still not much better. But they're a better option than they were - not because they're getting better, but because Verizon is getting worse. Locals Blackfoot Communications have become Chinook Wireless. While a possible option for those needing affordable local voice-only service, they had capacity issues. They've added a tower but they're still not very good either. Honestly a very tempting choice if you did need local-only though. Airtel is as unprofessional as ever. Poor service and their idea of roaming is using a prepaid Boost Mobile SIM card! And go into their store in Missoula sometime. That place STINKS and is a mess. Blackfoot / Chinook is a first class professional operation in comparison. National carriers T-Mobile, Cingular, and Sprint remain missing in action. The coverage on their maps is ALL roaming on Alltel (which runs both CDMA and very poor GSM for roamers). Overall, it's a joke. A bad joke. Montana needs to get some real competition in and start the battle here!

Poor outdoor and no indoor reception in the northern part of Kalispell becoming an increasing concern - Costco, Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Wells Fargo are just a few tenants coming to major retail developments in this area, not to mention several major residential subdivisions, a new high school currently being built, an addition to the community college, and more. Verizon on the surface appears uninterested in improving coverage in this area - I don't know if they're considering doing so or not. Their only competition in Alltel / Western Wireless / CellularONE - they've effectively worked to discourage T-Mobile and Sprint PCS from building out their own networks here.

I work for Cellular One in Kalispell and I must say this. Cell one seems to have better coverage throught the area and inside all the new buildings (Target, TJMaxx, Ect.) But, Verizon beats them hands down at everything else. Customer care is awesome. I actually know the engineer that holds up the Cell One towers and he has explained the network and its advantages over Verizon. Without much more I'll just say my overall opinion. If you are cheap and need a bunch of minutes, go with Cell One. If you want a good phone, don't mind paying a lil extra, and want to be treated like you are a valuable customer, go with Verizon. Cell one has terrible coverage once you get out of the area. A national plan with Cell One will cost more, give you less, and the service sucks so bad that you can't even use your texts or Mobile to Mobile minutes when you aren't at home. With a Verizon plan you are covered nationwide with almost no glitches. I know this because I travel around the country a bit. I can't even take my Cell One phone with me, its like a joke. It seems that Cell One is trying harder to expand their network. I know they just added a tower in Whitefish and another by woodland park. They are also implementing a new voicemail system that is more stable and recently signed a deal with Spring PCS for the area which will bring alot. Verizon is still the way to go if you don't want to get screwed alot. Trust me here, I'm lucky to see a happy customer leave my store. I celebrate if I actually am able to make one happy. I almost feel bad that I have to deal with Cell One, but just like everyone, it has its ups and downs.

Verizon has pretty good coverage in Kalispell and surrounding areas. They are definitally better than Cellularone if your going to travel. I also have to say, as I have been a customer through both Cellularone, and now Verizon, Verizon has much better customer service, they are nicer and resolve problems much better than Cellularone. Cellularone has rude rude rude customer service. Also Verizon promises to improve coverage in the Kalispell area as they already added two new towers north of town, whereas Cellularone promises no improvements.

Little to no indoor reception at Flathead Valley Community College, long running problem not improved by the new tower at Raceway Park. Verizon needs a new tower in this part of town soon, this is by far their worst coverage gap and it extends north into new major commercial development. This problem is only getting worse as density in the area increases, this was open farm land not much more than a decade ago. Traveling around Western Montana you'll hear arguments for both Verizon Wireless and Western Wireless (dba. CellularONE) as the best. In truth, both are barely adequate - and they have the best service around. Customer service at Verizon is superior to Western Wireless and network reliability seems slightly better as well. Both blow away Blackfoot and Airtel is so insignificant as to not count (I've never met an Airtel user so I don't know how good the service is). Due to agreements with Western Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint (the other two license holders for the area) do not sell service to Montanans at this time. Montana is a coverage challenge, with very low population density and many small towns, there is no doubt about that; but Kalispell is one of the seven major cities. In Missoula, Verizon holds the edge over CellularOne but both have almost perfect coverage in the city. In the surrounding area, both are bad but I know there have been a lot of NIMBY issues in regards to tower placement in Missoula county, therefore I can't blame the cell companies for these problems. In conclusion, After just over a year with Verizon; I have to say that I'm extremely happy with the quality of service provided, in general. More towers are always welcome, and the area I note above has to be their worst problem and the one I hear the most people complain about. Evaro hill would be second (north of Missoula, about 10 miles of empty road no service), and dropped calls on Hwy. 93 from Polson to Kalispell (along Flathead Lake) is third - but this may be unresolvable due to terrain. Ironically, I think Blackfoot (overall the worst) probably does the best in those second two sections...

Much improved with two new towers, Verizon service immediately north of town in Kalispell still leaves much to be desired. You would think that considering there's a new Verizon store in the very poor area, it would be their number one priority to fix. Nope. Instead they've put two new towers further north (one on 93 and one on 2) where they make some difference but don't result in dramatic improvement. Don't get me wrong - they're great to have, service was very poor before but VZN still needs some new towers and this should be their number one priority in the Kalispell area.

No reception inside most buildings, or very little in some. Needs improvement, but Verizon promises improvement soon. Compared to other options locally, A+ service - don't get me wrong about that at all.

CDMA coverage for the Flathead Valley is 95%. Best bet for sure.