Verizon Wireless Windows Phone 7 status (official release May 26th)

[doogie]

AT&T honestly seems to work better in less densely populated areas. In the Seattle area if you're at a concert, football game, etc..anywhere where you've got a ton of devices in a smallish physical space - you will experience delayed SMS, slow/inaccessible data, missed calls..etc. My folks in the midwest don't have these kinds of problems since capacity is usually not an issue. Their coverage area is better due to GSM seemingly not reducing coverage based on capacity (in other words, CDMA seems to reduce the footprint as more devices connect).

I use a Network Extender at home so coverage/battery life is absolutely maxed even in my basement. I had AT&T's MicroCell and found that it just fought with the "real" towers in the area; causing dropped calls/poor quality/etc as our phones would bounce back and forth between the MicroCell and AT&T proper. This does not happen at all on Verizon.

Lastly and more of an annoyance than anything - GSM phones created noise in my car speakers as well as on my desk, in particular when I was in an area of weaker signal strength. Bluetooth headsets behaved differently as well - on outgoing calls, audio was not passed from the phone to the Bluetooth device until the call is connected (someone answers). I've used CDMA (Sprint, then Verizon) for a number of years so I don't know if I'm expecting too much here.

Bottom line, definitely try it out before you commit..or consider Sprint