Kendall, in remote and barely civilized places like Maine (grin) coverage can be spotty and one carrier often is much better than the others. Part of the price you pay for living in such wonderful environs.

The best tactic is probably to ask friends and neighbors who frequent the same places you do. And let me suggest that coverage at home is important, but not NEAR so important as it is on the road between home and the supermarket, the doctors, or wherever you and your significant other frequently travel. At home, well, there's the land-line and they are pretty durn reliable.

And, in remote areas, even though someone here at Mudcat may HATE or LOVE company XYZ, it's pretty irrelevant, 'cuz XYX may be the best or worst choice for where you are.

Once you've figured out a good carrier, figure out a good phone. Some are better than others.

My experience is that Motorola probably has the best 'RF' deck--- important in remote areas. With few exceptions, they're just excellent. The little RAZRs have been around forever, can be quite cheap, and tend to work very well indeed. Samsung and LG are very uneven in this respect. As are surprisingly, Nokia.

My Cingular phone worked very well on the way up to the Orono area from parts south, at Pushaw Lake, and in Bar Harbor. It's a Motorola--- another good reason to talk to neighbors. If half of them are on Cingular, and have no complaints, it may be that their handset is just better than yours.

By the way, I use a Motorola MPX220--- an old windows 'smart' phone that does very well with Cingular. Before that, I used Motorola 'vx' phones with Verizon, and also had great luck--- but as someone else said, they get you coming and going for things like messaging and file transfers.

One issue with Verizon is that their technology is getting a bit orphaned. They've gone with CDMA, as opposed to the GSM that the rest of the world is using. That means that ONLY their network (and one other, smaller one, I forget which) will work with their service. That can narrow coverage a bit. Or, not.

Again, it all depends on how they're doing in your region.