I can get a little better reception outside my house. Reception inside house is 2 bars and I can still make calls but some incoming calls don't ring my phone. In addition, my phone does some peculiar things, which are hard to describe, inside the house. I also have a Motorola V3a Razor for my mother to use in the house, as I had my landline terminated. This phone more often than not refuses to ring for incoming calls and it only shows 1 bar for signal strength in the house. The newer Motorola razors that are out now, and the original razors like the one I personallly use, which is the V3m razor, work very well in some rural areas and not as well in other rural areas. I guess my home is in a rather dead area, but there's a tower about 7 miles away though there are hills and trees between me and the tower. I'm still searching for the best phone for my particular area and have yet to discover it. You can't go by what either Altell or VW tell you because both simply want your business and want to sell you a phone. Personally, I'm going to switch to a Blackberry 8830. I'm told they do exceptionally well more than other phones out here in the sticks because they're better for faint or weak signal strengths. Plus, I like the features of this particular phone, should I need to use them, but that depends on whether these 'features' will receive good enough coverage out here to use them. Unless I'm mistaken, calling and receiving normal voice calls is one thing; texting and using GPS / Navigation features is another thing altogether. But then, the only time I'll need navigation is when I'm in a larger town with which I'm not familiar... and in a larger town like Sioux Falls or Rapid City or Aberdeen, there should certainly be plenty of signal strength to use the navigation feature.