cell phone providers?

time to renew my cell phone, am currently with verizon. any recomendations for a provider with regards to the best coverage, i.e. signal in the mountains and so forth?<br><br>(not intended to start a discussion on use of cell phones in the wild). thanks....

I have been pretty happy with Verizon here in Oregon. They seem to work great on all the major volcanoes. I've used mine from the summit of Adams, Shasta, St Helens (to call my mother on mum's day), skinning up South Sister, on the NE & So sides of Hood (friends TDMA AT&T wouldn't work on the NE side), etc. In really remote areas I've found I sometime get better service if I explicitly set my phone to use the analog network. To a lesser extent reception may also be influenced by your phone. YMMV.

I, too have had pretty good service with verizon in the mountains. I have loaned my phone out more than once to others whose phone was not getting a signal. Mine is usually the only one that works in front of the bathrooms at the Paradise parking lot.<br>One other thing, Jeff touched on it, if you want your phone to work well in the boonies it needs to have the capability of operating in the analog mode. More and more of the new units are digital only, especially the picture phones.

Being that the wireless phone business is my biz I would ditto that if you want remote coverage go analog but it will cost you an arm-leg. If you only want a phone for emergencies in remote areas get an analog phone that has no service, but is functional and take it along. ALL analog phones still have 911 service and will work for that purpose and you don't need to be signed up with anyone to use it. If you just want to chit-chat on the mtn. and you want coverage everywhere then verizon still offers the dual-mode service. I work for T-Mobile and we no longer offer dual-mode because it is a money-loosing service and our company no longer wanted to loose money with it. (FWIW)

Ah-ha. Good info, hyak.<br>That certainly explains why verizon phones work better in the boonies (provided they are of the dual-mode persuasion).<br>That also explains why verizon has more dual-mode phones available (but comparatively few in proportion to their total models available). Plus I now understand why they try to push digital only phones -- they're trying to wean their customer base off the costly (at least for them) analog service.<br>Interesting...

Thanks, hyak.net, that explains some things. I'm with T-Mobile and get "4 bar" reception on top of Snoqualmie Mt. or Stevens Pass, nada from anywhere on Rainier. When I answered the T-Mobile questionaire about desired new service areas and told the woman I would like to get reception from Rainier, Baker and Adams, she sounded dumbfounded.

thanks, all, for the good info.<br><br>i renewed with verizon. the new phone i'm getting comes with "tri-mode" or something like that, and apparently will pick up analog signals in addition to digital. didn't think to ask what the 3rd modality was ??? <br><br>it was just one of their cheapie specials, i guess ($20 buy one, get one free). i'll try and pay more attention to where i can get a signal now, just out of curiosity.

Adam ,<br>I 'll rember to take you along for the phone

yah, i'm so leading edge. nearly 2005 and finally decide to get myself a cell phone. (my wife's had one for years). no more troubles for not calling after a longer than expected backcountry day???