Yes, and some of them even advertise coverage in LARGE dead spots.  Large as
in 10-15 mile radiuses covering entire towns.  Sprint does this and is doing
it now.

Well, regardless of how anyone gets to the top, I know that Sprint
advertises coverage in areas where there is none.  They also ranked lowest
in customer service and have a higher churn rate than the other providers.
When I was with Voicestream, their map was really accurate, within a mile or
two.  I probably had 3 dropped calls with Voicestream in the two years I was
with them.  I've had no dropped calls with AT&T to date.

It's also a matter of network maintenance, which, of the four carriers I've
tried, Sprint has been the only one that advertised service in an area and I
couldn't use the phone.

Maybe if they can't play with the big boys, they should try something else.
Maybe Sprint and LG could go into the paperweight manufacturing business
together.

There's no misconception on my part, thank you!  Look at the coverage
map for a rural service area (take CMA666 [Texas 15 - Concho]) for
example) from Sprint PCS or T-Mobile and then compare to that of the
two cellular providers in that area.  Now you tell me if one doesn't
look like Swiss Cheese and the other one like wall-to-wall carpeting.

Yes, I know some providers lie about their true service area.  Yes, I
know Sprint PCS has only been building out for a few years vs. the
cellular providers since the mid-80's.  Yes I understand the economics
and consequences of covering low-density population areas.

All of this doesn't change the facts.  For good rural coverage, the
PCS providers cannot compete against incumbant cellular providers.

Actually, it is true.  If Cingular, Verizon Wireless, or AT&T Wireless
decided that they were going to drop coverage in areas that were not by
themselves profitable, they would see an increase in customer churn.
Not only would you see coverage dropped intirely in some areas, total
states would have coverage dropped (Like North Dakota, South Dakota,
Montana, Wyoming, Idaho).   The larger the coverage area, the more
subscribers that provider will have.

It depends on whether you have a GSM, TDMA/AMPS, or AMPS only phone.  I
drove from Bismarck, North Dakota to Orlando, Florida, and the only
areas without coverage were in the Chatanooga, TN area, where it was not
even safe to use the phone.  The only place I hit roaming was in
Wisconsin and part of Illinois.  I have a Moto C331t TDMA/AMPS phone,
and it beats the coverage of even CDMA phones for digital service and
quality (I had three CDMA phones -- all experienced unstable signal,
poor digital quality but good analog qualilty, and poor digital
coverage).  I think it makes a difference what kind of phone you have -
GSM and CDMA are newer technologies, and therefore still have bugs that
are being worked out.  In 10 years, it's possible that we may not even
see an AMPS system, or even a TDMA system, but it's possible that those
systems may even grow in coverage as some equipment manufacturers may
offer discounts to carriers expanding TDMA, more as a back-up system.