Coverage comments are submitted voluntarily by visitors around the Earlysville, VA area.
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US Cellular beats out ALL competition in Charlottesville, VA and surrounding areas. I constantly lend my phone to my friends who have no signal. Great reception in Earlysville, and all major areas are equally well covered. I've never had a dropped call in the 14 months I've been with U.S. Cellular, and I literally have never lost reception for more than a few seconds. U.S. Cellular uses the 800 mhz frequency, which penetrates the walls of buildings much better than competitors using the 1900 mhz band (i.e. Sprint / nTelos). Customer service is all United States based, and you can understand their representatives. U.S. Cellular beats Alltel by far. While Alltel has the 2nd strongest reception, their network is overloaded, rendering it unusable at times. Because there is no native Verizon network in Charlottesville, everyone with Verizon roams on Alltel. Because of this, the Alltel towers become unusable during peak times (particularly UVA games, Foxfield, etc.) Also, Alltel's customer service is subpar - there are extremely long waits, particularly at the Charlottesville store (often times over an hour.) If you go somewhere without a U.S. Cellular signal, you'll generally roam on Verizon, who has the most solid nationwide network. And if you don't roam on Verizon, you will always have Alltel to back you up. There is nothing to lose by switching to U.S. Cellular!
Great reception almost anywhere - in Charlottesville, I usually get perfect service. Out here in the middle of nowhere between Earlysville and Free Union, I have 1 bar - enough to make a call. Previously I've had SunCom and Alltel - SunCom had horrible service out here, couldn't make calls whatsoever, and it's been so long since I've had Alltel that it's possible the service has changed. Great thing about Sprint is that I can switch my phone to roaming - I can roam on the US Cellular network and get three out of four bars on my phone (so nearly perfect service.) I'm in a two year contract with Sprint, but I'm happy, for the most part. I wish I had gone with US Cellular, as they literally get service almost anywhere in Earlysville. But Sprint can be bundled with DSL, Dish network TV, and local phone service - so it can all come on one bill, which is nice. The only place where I've been disappointed with reception is Forest Lakes - although there are towers across 29, I only get 1 bar. Overall, I'd recommend Sprint, but not over US Cellular.
Horrible service around Whytes market and surrounding neighborhood. Neighbors report same results with various phones and companies. All conversations for the last 8 months are broken and garbled.
