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Being in a large metro area myself, I had a few times where I was getting service and then didn’t (in an area I frequented a lot). It wasn’t necessarily on the fringe area, but I still encountered problems.

So, I reported it a few times and got back the answer that a particular cell tower was giving them problems. And I identified that cell tower, too, and also decided to verify it by driving to another cell tower. I wanted to find out, since I was in that area a lot. Sometimes it went *dead*, too... and then the iPhone would acquire from another cell tower.

Well, this went on for a while, intermittently, and I would report it regularly, too. There were times it was out for a while (like a few hours) but someone would get on it and get it back online again.

In short, I suspected that they had some bad equipment there on that particular cell tower and had problems getting it functional again. But, finally, after a while, they did get it running again (i.e., without future interruptions).

And then, again — I’ve been in other cities (like Portland, for example), where I had another service (it was Qwest, at the time). And I could identify particular “spots” in the city where service would drop out, and then come back again, when driving another couple of blocks or so. And so, I see that other services, for some reason, have some dead spots and drop-outs for various reasons.

Now, what I’ve found out from my reading is *not* that there are not fringe areas or possible drop-outs — but rather — that the vast majority of users will have absolutely no problems in that regard.

Thus, the question about “anecdotal reports” (like this one) is whether they indicate the “overall state” of the cell system, or whether they represent isolated events. And from what I’ve seen, they represent isolated events... :-)