My Verizon plan expires in five days and I'm going to get a family plan with my fiancee. We were leaning towards T-Mobile because it appears to be the cheapest and we would only need a one-year commitment. However, I'm not sure of the coverage. I know they have a coverage map online, but I was wondering if anyone would be willing to share some first-hand experiences with T-Mobile.

I probably shouldn't be saying this since I now work for one of their competitors, but I had T-Mobile for a couple years in Rolla and coverage was great. Since the area is void of any T-Mobile stores, I don't think they have too many customers in the area, thus, you'll never have problems with the network being too busy for you to use your phone. If you want to get a Blackberry or something that uses data, you might want to reconsider, because they only have GPRS in Rolla, which is painfully slow...like dial-up speeds. AT&T has EDGE in Rolla (150-200kbps or so) and will probably eventually get 3G, and Sprint and Verizon to my knowledge both have EvDO which is around 1 megabit. But if you're just using it for voice calls, I'd recommend them.

Oh, and one thing to remember is that they only have coverage along 44 and in Rolla. If you're going either north or south of Rolla on 63, you'll eventually get out of T-Mobile's coverage area and end up roaming on AT&T, you don't pay for roaming (trust me, I spend entire weekends roaming on AT&T in both Wisconsin and Puerto Rico and didn't pay a dime), but there's probably about a mile or 2 where you might be out of T-Mobile coverage but not yet in roaming and won't have any service, so it might be problematic if you leave town a lot or live out in that area.

Verizon and I'm guessing sprint (cdma) have the same deadzone going up 63, although it is usually super brief. Big red is probably the most expensive, but I have had really good success with them except in a a few weird areas (like my apartment this summer (overland park, KS)) where cdma phones just had no signal at all, but GSM worked fine. Worth noting my roommate who did get cell reception had tmo, but those with atat also were fine.

I haven't been to Rolla in 5 years or so, but I do have T-Mobile and have been reasonably satisfied with it. I don't text and I don't use my phone for internet access, so for my habits, nobody else can touch the plan I have with T (600 anytime minutes, free nights and weekends, $47/month or so, including all the taxes and crap). I think their selection of phones is lackluster, but I don't care too much. My Razr bit the big one about 3 weeks ago and I got a Nokia MusicExpress to replace it, and that's good enough for me.

Coverage is pretty good in the KC area. I drive about 75 miles (round trip) every day from my house in Shawnee Mission to my office in Leavenworth, through some pretty sparse terrain, and the only problem area I have is about a mile long, and is really hilly, so my guess is that it's a problem for other people too. My phone works fine in my house, but my mom's house (about 2.5 miles away) gives it a little bit of a problem.

I didn't have too many problems with T-Mobile coverage on my modded iPhone or the crappy phone I had before hand. The reason I switched to AT&T was for the data plan, as was mentioned above, as I was tired of running on GPRS. Edge is so much nicer.

I've got a T-Mobile phone. The 63 thing these guys are talking about is indeed pretty brief and only actually occurs at points where the rock walls on either side of the road are pretty high. When you get to the top of a hill or the walls aren't too tall you still get coverage. Other than that I get bars pretty much everywhere, it works pretty well.

I have T-Mobile too because all the Europeans we know have it. And it works pretty good for calls and texting. Usually in buildings I get 1-2 bars anywhere else its full.

FWIW I had tmobile like 6 years ago. It was good in KC and they had cool phones