AT&T with Nokia rocked in my house for the last 8 years... they went downhill with Cingular. I have been through 4 different phones this week..they all suck except for the "freebie" Nokia 3120. I traded them all back in for the Nokia with no bells or whistles. If you are stuck with Cingular then do yourself a favor and get a Nokia - even if you have to get it from Ebay. And if the Ebay phone is "locked" it's really easy to unlock Nokia phones for your sim card. With AT&T I had full signal strenth 24 / 7; now I sit in my house and watch the bars go from 5 to 0 in 2 seconds - crazy! At least with Nokia I am able to dial out with 0 bars showing and it perks right up. I attribute that to Nokia, not Cingular. They suck at the moment. Hope they get better soon or they are gonna be hurting bad!

Like many others I used to be with AT&T and a Nokia phone and always had great coverage. Now that Cingular has taken them over I had to switch phones and to get one with the same features I had on my old Nokia I went with the Motorola V551. Now I can barely get a signal at home and it drops calls all over town or wherever I go. I am extremely disappointed so far and can only hope it improves as I have a one year contract!

great reception all over austin. never had any trouble.

Reception sucks at my house, always cracking up or dropping calls. Have a hard time dealing with it. Had AT&T and they had great reception, but terrible customer service. We need something better than the cell phone!

I have been with Sprint for 6 years now and I can't WAIT to leave them. Strange over charges appear on my bills, and RUDE customer service reps are incredibly UNhelpful. Currently I receive absolutely no service, several calls are dropped, and I never know whether or not I will have service. I can't wait to switch to another carrier. Don't go to Sprint unless you are SURE you get service in that area.

On the whole pretty good. Occassionally the phone will tell me I'm roaming (when I'm not) and occassionally a call will go straight to voice mail.

I switched from Sprint to Cingular because they claim to have the best reception, but man was that wrong. This thing is horrible. It drops consistently around my house, and driving on Bee Caves, even "inside 360", is a joke. Sprint may have dropped more calls, but at least when you were connected the reception was good. Now I guess I'll try Verizon.

I also have Virgin Mobile service (for 2 years now) and usually get 4 or 5 bars nearly always. My only complaint is with the Audiovox 8500 as the sound quality isn't always up to par (sometimes tinny sounding). I do hit dead spots along 290 when I drive out to Wimberley and some as well on RR 12 but good service in Wimberley proper.

I use Cingular KIC (prepaid) with their cheapo Sony Ericsson T237 phone (their giveaway phone on postpaid plans) and surprisingly, I get good reception both indoors and outdoors (minimum 4 bars always) and the sound quality is also surprisingly quite good. No dropped calls yet either. I am close to the Y in Oak Hill and was leery about service in this area but so far I've no complaints.

Have been with AT&T for 3 or 4 years and never had any problems. Use phone as primary phone at home as well. Since the merger between AT&T and Cingular, I drop calls constantly. I can watch my bars go up and down while sitting in one spot. It is very frustrating... I hate my service! I wish I could have the old AT&T back! Now I will have to look for a new provider because I cannot handle having to call someone back 3 times just for a 5 minute conversation.

Can not use from my home off Bee Caves road 5miles west of 360. Cannot use on Hamilton Pool road. Can not use at my work place at Palmer one mile east of IH35. 100% reliably drops calls in "Death Valley" (Bee Caves and 360). Inconsistent call quality, drops calls frequently, almost everywher else. When I first called Customer service to see if the phone was defective I was told that Austin was a "weak coverage area" and that I should not expect any different (better) Customer experience. This contradicted what the Cingular salesman stated.

Coverage seems good, and I've never failed to get a strong signal except in areas when no one (including Sprint users) could get a signal. The reception during a call will often drop to blank space, so it is difficult to tell if the person you're talking to just paused or it was dropped, until you both realize you can't communicate. Often my phone will not ring, and I won't notice until I get the "missed call" message directly afterwards. When it works, it is fine, and the sound is clear. My calls to customer service over various problems has been frustrating, rude, and insulting on *every* instance.

Bar hopping on 6th and the phone works great. (perfect for my drunk dialing)

Perfect service at the Riata on 183 and Oak Knoll. Had t-mobile; did not work there.

I am unable to make calls to my phone in the area. I am thinking of switching from AT&T to Verizon or tmobile. ATT Cingular merger seemed to have messed up their network.

When there is reception, the calls are frequently dropped. Reception in our home is spotty, at best.

Just switched from AT&T to Cingular because of the merger and the older phone had had it. My calls always break up all over north Austin

Lived in the same house for 10 yrs - always used AT&T TDMA, which has been great, until Cingular bought them - it has been down hill ever since. Poor reception, dropped calls, etc. - thought it was because Cingular was pushing GSM and dropping support of the TDMA system, but after reading this board, I am not so sure I want to switch! Who has good coverage in Shady Hollow??

Only 1 bar in GSM mode at my house in the Millbrook neighborhood (Parmer and McNeil).

One minute it's up, the next it's down. At night it works. It takes the day off, dropping calls to the point that it takes 2-4 calls to communicate a 3 minute message. Hey, but what's better?