After heading north of Whitefish, service in NW Montana does not exist. Even in Whitefish and the Flathead, service is questionable.

Little to no indoor reception at Flathead Valley Community College, long running problem not improved by the new tower at Raceway Park. Verizon needs a new tower in this part of town soon, this is by far their worst coverage gap and it extends north into new major commercial development. This problem is only getting worse as density in the area increases, this was open farm land not much more than a decade ago. Traveling around Western Montana you'll hear arguments for both Verizon Wireless and Western Wireless (dba. CellularONE) as the best. In truth, both are barely adequate - and they have the best service around. Customer service at Verizon is superior to Western Wireless and network reliability seems slightly better as well. Both blow away Blackfoot and Airtel is so insignificant as to not count (I've never met an Airtel user so I don't know how good the service is). Due to agreements with Western Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint (the other two license holders for the area) do not sell service to Montanans at this time. Montana is a coverage challenge, with very low population density and many small towns, there is no doubt about that; but Kalispell is one of the seven major cities. In Missoula, Verizon holds the edge over CellularOne but both have almost perfect coverage in the city. In the surrounding area, both are bad but I know there have been a lot of NIMBY issues in regards to tower placement in Missoula county, therefore I can't blame the cell companies for these problems. In conclusion, After just over a year with Verizon; I have to say that I'm extremely happy with the quality of service provided, in general. More towers are always welcome, and the area I note above has to be their worst problem and the one I hear the most people complain about. Evaro hill would be second (north of Missoula, about 10 miles of empty road no service), and dropped calls on Hwy. 93 from Polson to Kalispell (along Flathead Lake) is third - but this may be unresolvable due to terrain. Ironically, I think Blackfoot (overall the worst) probably does the best in those second two sections...

No Verizon service on US-93 from just off of I-90 (a mile, tops) until you're almost in Arlee. Verizon definitely needs to fix this, for public safety reasons if nothing else.

Tower must have a malfunction. Most of the time I have to walk up a block to be able to get my messages (1-2bars), but I could not make a phone call with it. I have to go up to the 6th floor of the engineering building to be able to make a phone call.

I was just in Missoula, MT for business, and I unpleasantly found that I received no reception whatsoever with my Sprint cell phone. Nextel was also dead.

No reception inside most buildings, or very little in some. Needs improvement, but Verizon promises improvement soon. Compared to other options locally, A+ service - don't get me wrong about that at all.

all phones, all providers lose signal in Hellgate canyon, XM radio dies... complete deadzone

No real reception past Columbus, MT