You know those AT&T commercials that say "more bars in more places"? Well, they're lying.

Sounds more like a vacation plan.

Even if it were true, the whole idea of having full bars is a marketing illusion. You may be able to detect the tower at full strength, however when you make a call, your tower may not be receiving signal from you at the same strength due to interference.

It's like trying to throw a ball to someone uphill from you: They (the tower) can toss it down to you easily enough, but it'll be harder for you to throw it up to them.

as someone who has actually had access to internal signal maps at att they're really not so bad.

AT&T's coverage has been shrinking for years. They were hit hard by the AMPS shutdown (oddly, at the time they launched the 'more bars' campaign). See, a few years ago AT&T had the largest non-digital network, Sprint the largest digital network, and Verizon had the largest compound network (largest footprint, but no one phone could take advantage of it). AT&T didn't have to support the analog AMPS coverage after Feb 18th, 2008 and switched everything over to GSM. Well, the thing with all digital protocols is that they are on or off. With analog, you had this phantom coverage area where you could make a really shitty call, but a call none-the-less. AT&T switched off the analog and left huge rural areas without coverage that were once in the shitty zone. Verizon had a similar problem but it was much less pronounced since they've had handset compatibility problems for years (For example, in 2002ish if you had a verizon phone in St. Louis and took it to LA, you couldn't make a call but you were technically covered if you switched phones). Sprint developed the same problem as verzion when they absorbed Nextel - a bigger network of which no one could take advantage.

I was on Cingular before ATT took over, and at that time, Cingular was a shithole. I got no reception anywhere I went, from SoCal to Los Angeles to San Diego, and their prepaid plans were just godawful.

Verizon's okay. I dig em.