Verizon sucks! What people don't realize is when they acquired Alltel, Verizon cancelled their use contracts of Sprints towers. If your service suddenly became really bad in the spring of 2010 it's possible that you were typically connecting through a Sprint tower and now have no use with that tower. Verizon is more than happy to sell you a network extender for somewhere between $100 and $200 dollars, even though they will occasionally give them to other customers for free. My advice is find a provider that still believes in customer service. Verizon Wireless is now like the Wal-Mart of cell phone providers.