AT&T worked ok in Rapid City, Sturgis, Deadwood & Spearfish, but not so good in places like Custer. I found that rebooting occasionally would help. There was no data service out there anywhere.

 

I use verizon and had no problems any where I wanted to use it. Had good signal and no problems with calls during our 10 day trip to Sturgis and back.

 

Verizon worked great for me most anywhere in the Hills and around Sturgis. Always got 4 bars on my phone.

 

Damn is that weird. Myself, leeinmemphis, and monstead all carried digital rocks while in Sturgis.

Why would that be, some worked and some didn't?

 

Most likely those phones that didn't work didn't have their phone's preferences set to roaming. Since many plans and carriers charge for roaming, or at least used to, most phones come defaulted to no roaming. easy to change.

 

I have T-Mobile. Once I hit MT, WY, and SD I was either "roaming" (which I'm not charged for) or "piggy backing" on some other cell network (like Alltel or CellularOne).

 

verizon worked fine for us except the gps mod in the rockies would go off on occasion guess it's not sattelite based.

 

Mine worked off and on in the Sturgis area...even standing still I'd have 5 bars one minute, no service the next. Guess it was bouncing around trying to find towers. The 3 of us in my group are all with AT&T and had spotty coverage on our entire trip. Since we were in the mountains most of the time, I expected that, but didn't expect that in the Sturgis area.

I had Verizon prior to AT&T. In Dallas, they are comparable, but I find Verizon to have better coverage when traveling (I travel west of Dallas most of the time).

 

My son travels the country every summer with a Drum & Bugle Corps (Toledo Glassmen) He switched to ATT from Verizon in order to get an iPhone. He said that ATT's system is nowhere near as good as Verizon overall.

 

Sprint was fine going from Dallas - Amarillo - Denver, but once we got into Wyoming and closer to Sturgis, I only had digital roaming. Texting worked.