I was wondering--which cell phone provider has the best service (quality of call, minimal drops, etc) in metropolitan Cleveland? (Price, I assume, would be probably competitive among the carriers, and I'm sure customer service would be probably bad at all of them....) Thanks for your thoughts.

I have been happy with T-Mobile, but have not really been around the block with the various providers.  I think we had Altell and they pissed me off so we switched to T-Mobile about 7 years ago maybe and have been with them ever since.  No serious issues.  I think that reception and other performance qualities in the Cleveland metro will vary with the phone, not so much the provider.  My G1 is the first phone I have had that gets reception in my basement.  But if you travel a lot, you might want to go with a provider that has a broader national presence, like Verizon or AT&T

I find my current AT&T service to be better than that of my past service with Verizon signal-wise - even on an iPhone where dropped calls are apparently a huge issue in larger cities - I haven't once had a dropped call.

I travel occasionally for work and have found that between my coworkers and I we all get pretty good service in Cleveland, but in some more remote towns around the country I get better signal with Verizon than the folks with AT&T, Sprint or T Mobile.

I've had verizon for years, but had to drop them as they were evil--they began to destroy my credit--unwittingly to me until i got a letter from a credit card lowering my rate for a 'delinquent account'. long, painful story, but after months of heartache and letters to all the credit agencies and verizon, they finally corrected it and withdrew their claim. i can now never give them another dime. otherwise, cell-wise, i thought they were better than all the others out there, unfortunately. thanks for all the advice. sounds like AT&T is the winner.

I really really liked Alltel for the years I had them as they had about the same coverage as Verizon, but their customer service was much better in my opinion. Unfortunately Verizon bought them last year.

I've had Sprint, Cingular and AT&T. Cingular service was good but AT&T has improved on it. I even get service in my building's elevator (a little choppy but still receive).

Like I said, if your sole concern is service in the Cleveland Metro - where you are never too far from a cell tower - you might want to focus more on the phone than the provider.  My Blackberry could barely get service anywhere in my house (causing me too often to have to run outside to pick up a call), while my G1 gets service everywhere in my house.

Like I said, if your sole concern is service in the Cleveland Metro - where you are never too far from a cell tower - you might want to focus more on the phone than the provider.

Excellent point.

of course i want a cell carrier that works outside of cleveland as well, but if i were to be in cleveland more than any other single city, then the service in cleveland is what i would care mostly about. (for example, both verizon and sprint have national coverage, but in NYC sprint was HORRIBLE, but verizon was good, thus if i were in NY at least 51% of the time, i would not go with sprint.) thanks for all the input.

I bounce between NYC and CLE and I have AT&T and have no problems what so ever.