Slab and I fish together alot and so does fishnut...Slab has Verizon I have Sprint and Fishnut has Nextel. The Verizon phone has worked everywhere...the Nextel sucks most of the time..my Sprint service was started the first week Sprint came to town and has improved by miles since then. This summer it worked fine 40 miles off Westport and all the way to Neah Bay and offshore 30 miles there too...also worked all the way to Astoria...the coverage area has dramatically improved making it unlikely I will switch to Verizon but if I was going to start from scratch Verizon would be my choice too.