Unusable at Eagle Bend area of Bigfork, MT. Unusable at Somers, MT Unusable most of Lakeside, MT

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..

As of Monday, March 28th, AT&T's 3G network is live in the Kalispell area. This is an overlay of the Alltel CDMA network AT&T purchased last year, and so far coverage seems to be almost identical - which is to say, excellent. This new network is 3G / UMTS only. If you have an older phone that doesn't support 3G, or if you switch off 3G on your phone, you will continue to get terrible AT&T coverage in Montana.

No coverage whatsoever. I vacation here occasionally and I get nothing east of Coeur d'Alene and all throughout the flathead valley. This is confirmed on the Nextel website. Sprint may have better coverage, but my phone is dedicated Nextel.

I started with cellular one back when they were blackfoot. I've been with them thru three name changes and tons of issues. as of right now I'm seriously considering switching to some other company. The customer service is nice but they don't have much tech know how. For the past three months I've not been able to get picture texts or video texts. When I call customer service I get a bunch of excuses and promises to call me back.

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

I just switched to Cellular One (formerly Chinook) from Alltel (formerly Cellular One but totally unrelated.. Cellular One is a franchised name). I switched for reasons unrelated to reception, in general nobody beats Alltel's reception in Kalispell, MT. The one place Cellular One beats them I have found to be in Somers, Cellular One blows Alltel / Verizon out of the water. As a general rule though, the coverage density on Cellular One is VERY good, especially considering that it is a 1900MHz GSM network. There is no coverage in Libby, Eureka, Hungry Horse, or West Glacier (though Hungry Horse and W. Glacier are supposed to be covered sooner rather than later... we'll see. Cellular One isn't licensed in Libby). I'm quite impressed with the pricing and value that Cellular One is offering. The network reliability could use some improvement - for example, text messaging was down last Friday night. But Alltel and Verizon have major reliability issues of their own around here. Cellular One's greatest asset right now is their customer service. They promise customer service that will "knock your socks off" and they deliver - no voice menu nonsense or anything. Just a reasonably knowledgeable person on the line quickly! Add service in Hungry Horse and I'll be a very happy camper! Additionally, they plan to cover highway 83 through the Swan Lake area - presently a dead spot for all carriers. This will be a *huge* benefit to public safety and simply cannot happen soon enough!

Getting more and more droped calls. Not sure what is going on with Alltel. Service seems to be getting worse. It is somewhat better during offpeak times. Now, I am roaming on Verizon while at home. I just got a new phone from Verizon yesterday and its working much better

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.

I've been with Alltel for 2 months after being with Verizon for 4 years, and I've got to say that alltel, in my opinion, is a far better choice for service here. The coverage is better throughout the area. Far better especially indoors. I do quite a bit of traveling and I've never been without service. Overall, I would say I average a couple bars more than Verizon but there are some places I can now make a call with no problem that I was stuck on 0 bars with Verizon. The north part of town immediately comes to mind but it just seems better overall. I'm happy with the switch. The plan is far better. My Circle saves a ton of minutes. I was paying for 2200 with Verizon's family plan, but now we can get by with 900 + my circle so I'm saving about $50 a month. The store had a 15 minute wait when I went but I would recommend the switch to others simply because Alltel works better and costs less.

The reception itself was good, but being a traveler from Europe, it didn't let me roam anywhere. I could only get "emergency only" service.

No, Alltel isn't perfect but they sure beat Verizon! Alltel's coverage around Kalispell is far better inside buildings, and it extends way further west and north of town.

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...

I just switched to T-Mobile. WireFly / InPhonic will sell it to you despite no native coverage - I assume they have some special deal with T-Mobile to allow this. They give Spokane, WA numbers but with some hassle you can change them. The phone will default to roam on USA-590 (the Alltel GSM network, very mediocre) but can also choose to roam on USA-570 / CHINOOK (depends on what the phone feels like calling it, Chinook Wireless' new network) which is very good and well on it's way to becoming the best network in Montana. So why T-Mobile instead of a cheaper plan from Chinook directly? I travel a lot and also plan to leave this place... I'd say stick with Chinook directly if you're local and staying local. It's cheap and it's what you'll want to use with T-Mobile anyways /

Get Alltel if you want to be able to use your phone in stores. Verizon doesn't work in Super 1, Costco, Wal-Mart, Shopko, K-Mart, Target, Home Depot, basicallly any store or larger building Verizon won't work in, but Alltel does. Alltel is also improving customer service.

great service. you have to order it through Wirefly / Inphonic but you get perfect service throughout most of montana

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