I have heard a lot of good things about Verizon.
To provide a variation on your theme, I would like to go ahead and add T-Mobile to the "suck" category.
They have lousy coverage, only mediocre quality, and terrible customer service, with agents in their employ that border on being complete mental idiots.
I'd submit that most providers have people who are happy and unhappy with them.
Verizon is hands down the largest provider, but they use CDMA technology. CDMA is a solid voice standard and in some instances actually sounds better than GSM (which Cingular and T-Mobile use) but it is not as robust with its data features and the communication to the tower is controlled by the telephone rather than the more sophisticated electionics located at the tower.
What it means is that CDMA is more prone to dropped calls.
Cingular and T-Mobile are both solid wireless providers, but Cingular has just purchased AT&T wireless and are going through a huge network integration.
In fairness, coverage on GSM networks tends to be more threadbare since the technology was a johnny-come-lately to the United States, and thus you have somewhat fewer (temporarily) roaming options.
The upside to that is you can take your GSM (Cingular / T-Mobile) phone into most foreign countries and it will still work while your Verizon phone is just a paperweight.
It depends on what you're looking for in the end. Most wireless providers allow either greatly discounted or free unlimited minutes to in-network people. All are developing some really cool technologies in the coming months and years.
T-Mobile is launching a base-station that plugs into your cable / DSL router which gives you an in-home cell tower, for instance. T-Mobile also got all four J.D. Power wireless awards (customer service performance, overall customer satisfaction, satisfaction with retail service, and call quality performance SE/SW) for 2004.
Verizon added the most net customers and dominates the market. All the providers offer a solid profit at competitive prices due to the number of players in the market. If one provider doesn't satisfy you in a given area, you have the luxury, generally, of choosing another.
None of them "suck." Your personal experience may have.