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I can get hardly any service even though I can see the cell phone towers blinking across the sound. Less than 5 miles as the crow files. They blink red off and on all night. What is most astonishing is that I can more often than not often hear the person clearly saying " are you there.. are you there?? they cannot hear me I can hear them fine. So I redial and redial and redial racking up big bills with little communication. Or I drive to the ferry landing and waste gas (carbon foot print) just to call and sometimes even in the rain I have problems there getting through with the new blackberry. I had a LG chocolate so I thought that was my problem but the tour is even worse and harder to dial from to boot. I live off the grid with solar so I do not have a land line option. Basically everyone on the mainland thinks I am deadbeat and avoiding their calls. I don't mind living withour communication but hey lighten up on the scorn from the mainland phone junkies.

Verizon has good reception at points on Orcas Island, including the Ferry landing (where they have a cell site), but very poor reception in the only real city on the Island.

AT&T generally unavailable across Orcas Island. Nothing here at our home. A little in Eastsound, depending--the Wash Fed parking lot is decent. No carrier has decent coverage on the island. The County is working to changge the NIMBY cell tower rules; hope this means cell companies improve this situation soon.

Absoutely no reception on much of Orcas Island. If you're at ferry landing or in Deer Harbor, you get fair reception; everywhere else, in our experience, horrible.