Desperate for reception in Medford OR

That area up along 243 is sorta a blackhole for all the carriers. Sprint, Nextel and Verizon aren't half bad in the main part of Medford, but the North half is sketchy.

 

Not a good idea to post your e-mail address anywhere on the web.

 

The local providers (east and west of I5) include US Cellular, and Unicel (formerly cellular one NW). A Cingular (AT&T) GSM phone will roam on Unicel but it sounds like you already tested that.

See if you can find someone with either US Cellular, Verizon, or Sprint (with included roaming coverage) to try out at your house.

Verizon just launched service in Medford, so if you have to go the 14 (or 30) day trial, I'd do it with them first.

The reason I say this is that Verizon will tolerate virtually unlimited roaming minutes-- so even if you spend a lot of time roaming on US Cellular, you won't get billed for it. Alternately, if US Cellular covers the area well, you could consider using them, but then you will be roaming in Sacramento...

-Dan

 

In southern Oregon, US Cellular and Edge Wireless tend to have the best coverage. I recommend starting with US Cellular. If you don't like their coverage, try Edge. CDMA is generally a better way to go than GSM in the Pacific Northwest, since there's more available coverage.

While Dan has a good point regarding Verizon's virtually unlimited roaming policy, the downside is that Verizon handsets will prefer to hang onto a weak and unusable Verizon signal rather than roaming. Unlike with Sprint handsets, there's no way to force roaming, so your experience could be quite poor. Verizon, like Sprint, is a PCS CDMA carrier in southern Oregon.