I travel on business. T-Mobile works great in Denver where I live. Every major and non-major city I've had to go to since I got the phone in February has had 3G coverage. Excellent 3G coverage. Frankly, I don't care if I have decent data coverage when I'm out in the boondocks. I'm rarely, if ever, outside of a major metro area or major interstate corridor.

It's the same reason I went with SprintPCS 10 years ago for just regular phone service. Excellent coverage where I needed it. I stuck with them way too long though....

Sprint customer service got truly horrible. With their billing issues from the Nextel merger, it's amazing they didn't go belly-up.

Now that I've rooted my G1, upgraded to CyanogenMod, and moved my apps to my SD card, I couldn't really ask for more. (Who am I kidding? I want better battery life, a larger screen, and a faster CPU -- but that's the phone, not the service)

And no, you don't have 3G coverage in the middle of nowhere -- Verizon made that quite clear. But in the real world, as long as it makes you happy, who cares if it's really 3G. Although, since this is slashdot, it matters!

Thanks for the coffee on my keyboard. Too bad I don't have mod points!

No mod points at the moment, but you'd get them if you did. This is no different than a frequent flier program that gives some customers a special line to get serviced faster. One can (and probably should) make the argument that this should not receive a patent. (I only briefly skimmed the patent, so there may be real merit there, so this is just conjecture) But this idea of giving your best customers the best service doesn't make the practice itself bad. I've got a preferred customer account at newegg. I automatically get rush processing for free. Now that may not have any real value, as Newegg almost always manages to ship the same day anyway, but will that always be the case? If enough people get rush processing on a heavy order day, someone else will eventually get bumped to not have their order processed.