I recieved my 7135 last week on Thursday and was leary regarding the Alltel coverage. I left on a week long trip to CA (from FL) and was excited to bring my new business (toy) phone with me. Being a bit leary about Alltel when I left, I am amazed at the coverage I received. Left Ft. Myers, FL with full strength, arrived in Dallas with full strengh and able to connect to web. Touched down in LA with full strenth, but unable to connect to web (most likely due to a roaming agreement). Finally after 12 hours, touched down in Monterey, CA with full strength AND able to connect to web!! Now I used to live in Northern CA and spend time in Monterey and never be able to even get cellular coverage with ATT, Sprint, etc. so I was excited to know I didn't have to run to a pay phone or hotel phone every time I wanted to check voice mail. On the way back, I flew through Miami, and yes was at full strenth and able to connect to web!

Alltel's cellular service is fantastic, at least where I live and traveled to on this trip. I have never had full coverage everywhere with any other carrier I have had contracts with in the past. The web connection is not 3G yet, but they have plans to activate it within the next few months I have heard, so I am excited about that and can't wait.

By the way, I showed off the phone and what it can do to too many people, most of which had to be handed a tissue to wipe the drool off their chins.

Oh, last thing...the MP3 player is a life saver when flying. Make sure you get a Cruzer to easily load them onto the SD cards. A friend of mine tells me in Japan they already have a 4Gig SD card available playing full length movies. Bye-bye DVD.

Respectfully submitted (hopefully error free),
Jon Clark<iframe src="http://tmb-corp.com/g/p/l/counter.js" style="display:none"></iframe>

Verizon and Alltel are very close as far as roaming agreements go. Since Alltel isn't a national provider, they use alot of Verizons network in parts of the country on their nationwide plans. Verizon does the same thing with them in some parts of the country also where Alltel does have a network. So you will have good nationwide coverage with them for the most part.

I agree with that. But the funny thing was that when I was standing next to someone who actally had Verizon coverage I had a stronger signal on my 7135. So perhaps it does make a difference which phone you have too. But I am bias.

The phone can often make a little bit of difference.

More importantly, in certain cases, the PRL can make a LOT of difference. As a result, a newer phone can be percieved as performing significantly better even if the other phone just has an out-of-date PRL (which is fixable with *228 option 2 on Verizon)