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Well, yet another update. U.S. Cellular has dropped the ball again and things have been haywire the past month or so and I have been getting just about NO signal. I've called several times and they just say that there is nothing wrong with the system, that it must be my phone. Hmmm. I bought a new V266 and a new Nokia 6255i and had the same problem with both. Missed some important business calls so I know it wasn't the phones. Anyway, I ported to Alltel this week (it's worth the $150 early termination fee to have service in rural america) got a new Razr and I must say the service is absolutely stellar. While on US Cellular, 40% of my calls were roaming, and I was on the national plan. Now, not one call this whole week has been on roam. I'm now also on a national plan with Alltel. So far Alltel has an excellent signal, excellent clarity with all calls and I can make a perfect call in ALL the places I didn't have a signal with US Cellular. I even get a great signal in some really low places like around the ponds where before I could just get an analog signal with US Cellular. This just goes to show that not all carriers provide service in rural areas. Hope this helps everybody.

Since Alltel came on board we constantly have calls dropped. Fortunately I had free roaming with my AT&T contract and have changed my network to the Cingular towers. My network (Alltel)is usually 1-2 bars and I can't get reception in my home. Nor can I get reception where I work as a police officer and my phone is a vital link for me.

Just up graded to a new HTC Inspired 4G. I thought I could talk to the heavens. NOT. My cheek samsaung, and wifes pantex, worked a lot better. I can't hook up with my wifi router in the back room. Look like I will have to do something different.

Unbelievable, it is 2009 and we have terrible reception here in Guthrie on LG phones and Samsung phones too! My first phone a Samsung had a average of zero bars, and only one spot in the house to actually be able to make a call, which was upstairs next to a west window with the phone at a 90* degree angle, and your tongue held just right, with one eye closed. Reception was not much better outside. After going through 2 of those phones with the lovely ATT empire, they sent an LG after I threatened to cancel and go to Cox, amazing what that little bit of customer choice in progress, type of offer will generate. After getting off their left ear and sending me a LG to try..it was a little better, never have I had any bars above a 3 in Guthrie... anywhere. ATT should be ashamed of themselves for all the money they spend on stupid advertisments instead of upgrading the system... Word of mouth travels much faster than any 30 second spot on Nashville Network,... .Thank God for Land lines!

We get great reception with AT&T. Tried Sprint, couldn't use. Have friends with US Cellular, Nextel, T-Mobile, couldn't use here. Apparently AT&T is the best for this area. Also depends on the phone, My reception is great, my husband's Motorola V9 isn't near as good. I had a V9, turned it back in because it would sound like the person was 1000 miles away, then would just click back in and sound fine. Was told by AT&T customer service it might be due to no 3G service in this area, have to go down to Waterloo to get 3G.

Need to climb on top of house to get decent signal!

I can't believe what horrible service Cingular has been having. Even in my house in the middle of town it drops calls ALL the time! I only have 2 or 3 bars. It's ridiculous. I know other people that have Cingular and they hardly have any problems. My guess is the LG phone, but still I think its ridiculous to have such horrible service in the middle of town. I used to be a T-Mobile user and had much clearer reception and less dropped calls.

Have had NO problems with service at all travel to Texas,Kansas,Branson NEVER NEVER drop any calls OK inside buildings my bars do go 1 2 bars and on broadway going North from Waterloo rd I have drop calss on in the LOW spots...

Well, months have gone by from my previous 2 posts below and I thought I would bring everybody up to speed on my service. I stayed with US Cellular (they have the best plans and minutes anyway) AND I still have my Virgin Mobile phone I occasionally use too. The best part is, US Cellular has done some upgrading with their analog / digital roaming agreements apparantly because my serivce is now pretty good at the house. I've really been watching what channels / SID's my phone is using when I get the best signals and last month a usable analog channel has now gone digital. When I am on that channel, I can talk anywhere I want... .even in the house. I just wish they made phones where you could 'lock' a certain digital channel that is good instead of it 'automatically' picking the signal. At least I wish that were an option on phones. I can still force my phone to an analog channel which works so-so, but that same channel now has a digital option that is almost flawless. I must commend US Cellular for their work on that. Anyway, phone works really well now so I have no more complaints! :)

OK. I posted the one on U.S. Cellular below on June 22 at this same location. Got to reading other 'rural' posts about Sprint and decided to try it out. Didn't want to sign a contract to try out the service so I went and bought a pre-paid Virgin Mobile phone since they use the Sprint PCS network. Cost me $25 online and it came with $20 worth of airtime. Plenty to test the service out here in the country. And guess what... ... IT WORKS! HELLO US CELLULAR! My freakin prepaid Virgin Mobile phone works better out here that my monthly national plan from you! Go figure. So... ..I took it a step further and did some traveling with it. Know what? It gets a better signal in A LOT of places that my regular US Cellular phone doesn't..period. Only bad thing is the Virgin Mobile phone is 1900mhz only which means it WILL NOT roam and any 800mhz digital or 800mhz analog. You either have a signal or you don't. I travel a lot and I don't know if it will work in some of the places I go but so far I can say that Virgin and Sprint have US Cellular beat hands down when it comes to rural coverage. So much that I'm fixing to pay my early termination fee and switch to Sprint.