Touch pro unusable at random points (radio problem?)

[roflhorse]

Hey guys, I'm going to give you as much info as possible.
I'm an Alltel customer (bought by Verizon of course) with a Touch Pro running the newest stock rom from Alltel which is 6.1. The issue is that it seems like when I travel away from my apartment area, such as to my job which is 20 miles away, that the phone will lose connection, then slow to a halt. The radio connection indicator at the top switches from the normal tower with bars next to it, to a tower with an exclamation mark. I've been able to pull up the exclamation mark a few times and it says "no connection available".

This has happened repeatedly, and seems to go back to normal operation just as randomly. It's almost as if it's struggling to connect to the tower, and it's causing it to freeze up.

It should be noted that when I go into the connections tab, I cannot disable the phone connection whatsoever. I can flip data off and on (usually), and airplane mode is pressable but does not activate.

I honestly don't know what is going on, and I intend on flashing to energy rom and probably a new radio, but at the moment the damn thing won't even let me do anything.

Strangely this happened the other night, and I asked my GF to call just to see what happened, and it rang through but I could not pick up. The incoming call flashing lights would not stop flashing. A soft reset does nothing, and I've done hard resets in the past with no luck. I've called *228 and done both programming and roaming update.

Sorry that was so long, but does anyone have an idea of what is going on?
Edit: Sorry that was unclear. A hardreset will make it usuable and everything will be fine, but eventually it goes back to doing this.