Coverage in NC/ Motorola v635/Motorola e550

I've never been with T-Mobile, but I have known people with T-Mobile in NC and most of them were frustrated with coverage throughout the state. I'm sure they do fine in the larger cities and but my friends with T-Mobile experience many areas of No Service where my phone does just fine and that's mainly what I hear about. I'm with Alltel btw. From what I hear, Cingular is doing a lot of building out that way but they still have a way to go and I'm not sure if T-Mobile even roams off of Cingular in NC. Suncom is also big there but they tend not to participate in any roaming agreements since Cingular cut them off.
GSM does have the cooler phones but if you're going to be spending a lot of time down there, I would at least recommend an Alltel pre-paid plan for when you don't get T-Mobile coverage. They have the best coverage throughout the state in my experiences, even where I had many issues with Verizon, especially in the eastern part of the state. Alltel pre-paid plans aren't that expensive by the minute and they would cover most of your T-Mobile holes. If you're thinking of a regular plan, Alltel is usually much more reasonable price-wise than VZW, both of which are CDMA, and Alltel offers better coverage in many areas of the state, especially the more rural parts and especially in Eastern NC. But if you're going to stay in the cities and on the interstate, I'm sure your T-Mobile would be fine, perhaps in other places if they do have roaming agreements with the other providers in the state.