CELL PHONE COVERAGE AREA?

Mongo68 wrote:
... #1 if overloaded the site sends nothing- its busy and you get a fast busy tone...

Never heard a fast busy on a cell phone.

try atand t.

we get weird coverage, just sitting in the house i can have full bars and watch the bars just drop off to nothing. then pop back up, or just bounce around and all this with out moving the phone.
and this is in town.

The analog AMPS network, which covered very large areas with very few connections (thus many dropped calls) has been shut down, as of late 2008, in case you haven't been there since then.

The 2G network (TDMA, or more properly, D-AMPS) is now being shut down, so what was there not too long ago may not be there today.

This leaves us with 3G voice technologies (GSM and CDMA) for supplemented with a collection of fourth generation technologies for data. What they have in common is that they provide many more connection opportunities in a smaller geographic area. Face it, 90% of the mobile telephone and wireless data customers live in 20% of the geographic area of the U.S. When you stray from that, you are disconnected.

Since 90% of the customers do not stray, they will tell you XXXX works everywhere in the country. Living in the wide open spaces, I will tell you that you take what you can get, huge parts of the geography are covered by no wireless telephone service.

I only have anecdotes about T-Mobile. You are generally okay in medium to large cities but in other areas, lots of luck. Traveling down highways, including freeways, again lots of luck.
While we need to have competition with cell phone companies, as an RVer, we need rural access. Verizon #1, ATT #2 and close second is Sprint. T-Mobile? Great price until you don't have service.

There are a lot of responses above from folks who clearly didn't read the OP's post.

You have signal, but have an "emergency calls only" notice. That means TMO either does not have a current roaming agreement with whatever carrier who's network you are attached to, OR TMO has limited you because you may be roaming off-network all the time. Carriers frown on significant off-network roaming, because it costs them money.

Sprint used to be notorious for that, but I'm not sure about today.