I have talked to A Cingular rep and he told me that they are working on a Hwy 101 loop coverage area but it is not in effect yet. If they do get it up and going they will be the first I believe to offer good coverage on the majority of the OP. As far as areas like the Methow are concerned I have no idea. I like that area though and have fished the Methow and Twisp river many times. I am reminded of a fishing trip that a friend of mine and I took. His dad has a cabin on the Twisp and we went up to the end of the Twisp river road and hiked into a lake named Lewis lake. It was about a 4 or 5 mile hike but well worth it. Between us we caught 86 trout in 5 hrs. I caught all of mine on my fly rod. No real size (10-14 inches) to them but unreal numbers of fish in that crystal clear lake. I would toss my fly out there and watch the fish come in hoards toward it. If I didn't like the size of the lead fish I would just rip my fly off the water and cast behind the group to let a bigger one pick it up. Unreal. I guess I should edit this post because I got off subject and I actually do know something about cell phones being that I was a rep for At&t, Verizon and Sprint. At&t has the largest coverage or what they call a "footprint" nationwide followed by Verizon. For Washington though Verizon has them beat in most areas especially the farther west you go. Although Verizon uses cdma technology (soft handoff), as opposed to At@t's tdma (hard handoff) or GSM in some areas, their coverage for the most part in western washington is still analogue. Your digital phone will still work in these analogue areas because they are duel format designed to choose digital service over analogue when available or analogue service when digital is not available. Other services such as Cingular, Sprint, Nex-tell and the likes whom are a totally digital network are pretty much bound to the I-5 corridor and other major road systems, not in outlying areas. Sprints advertising is very misleading. They claim to have the only digital "nation wide coverage" but this in reality means that they have digital coverage in every major city in the US but not necessarily in outlying or rural areas. I would go with Verizon for now and see if Cingular lives up to their expectations in the future. Just my 2 cents.