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Phone 1 week old, signal is horrible. Absolutely no service in buildings on base, dropped calls while out in parking lot, I have yet to see more than 1 bar on my phone. 9 mile road is a big dead zone. Live in emerald isle - dropped calls while in my driveway! just switched from 11 years with sprint, considering going back... how frustrating

When I first moved here (Aug 2008), I had ATT. The reception was fleeting, at best. Then I changed to Verizon. My reception got worse. My son has a cheaper cell phone and seems to maintain a little better reception than I do with my Blackberry. Verizon said, "We're buying all Alltel's towers so your reception will be better on 15 Jan, 2009." In March, my reception still sucked. I went back to Verizon and asked why hasn't the reception improved??? "Oh, now we have to wait for the towers to be turned over to us.. paperwork... redtape... " Then the service will improve. Well, I'm paying for the HERE and NOW. I don't feel I should have to pay now, for service that WILL get better later. I've been paying for 1400 mins for a few months, expecting the reception to improve. It didn't. Finally, I dropped my mins since I was using less than 200 mins / month because my phone reception wouldn't work long enough to use any mins! I'm now paying for the lowest number of mins, and still can't get good enough reception to use even half of the mins for which I have to pay to continue service with Verizon. I was wondering if I got a different smartphone (because I really use mine a LOT for work), if I would get better reception with ANY service provider in this area.

As far as a Verizon signal, i've never seen 2 bars. The best thing about this is that when your phone loses all Verizon signal, it'll pick up the extended network which works great, even in my barracks room. The bad part about this is that you have to watch your phone and time a call when you're in a different network.

I am constantly in the "Extended Network," which uses Alltels towers. I can send text messages just fine, but I cannot send any picture messages, I have to travel several miles on highway 70 east and west to be able to send pic messages. I have called Verizon and have been told the Verizon towers are 4 miles away, and for optimum coverage you should be within at least 3 miles of the coverage area. I can also make calls within my barracks room although, the reception isn't all that great and I lose calls sometimes but I've heard the same thing from others that have different cell phone carriers. I would go with Alltel if I could get out of my contract. I think they have the better coverage on base.