[Ed Zachary]

We noticed oddness, as well.
My stepson lives outside our "local area". For a couple months after the assimilation, if we tried to call him using the number stored in our contacts, we would get the "number does not exist, has been changed or disconnected" message. We could hang up, dial it manually, and the call would go through. Also had problems with delayed texts (sometimes DAYS) or texts that wouldn't get delivered until after a couple of soft-resets.
I called VZW tech support and was told that this would probably clear up when his portion of the network got converted. Supposedly, they started in the NE and are working their way across the country.
The problems went away after a couple of months.