More bars in more places

I recently bought an iPhone and I absolutely love it except for one thing: AT&T service. I’m not the type of person who makes a lot of phone calls anyway (apparently this is normal), but it would still be nice to be able to make a phone call in my house which is located barely a mile from 2 major freeways (60, I-10) in the heart of Tempe, AZ. I get dropped calls probably 40% of the time I call from inside my house and 10% while I’m outside. You don’t know how inconvenient it is to have to run outside and pray as I answer the rare important phone call.

Today I it was particularly bad, so I went to check their coverage map, which is a great web 1.5 app. I was only mildly surprised to see AT&T acknowledgement that I reside only in an area of “Good” coverage:

My house is right in the middle of that orange splotch, across the street from the park with the lake. And the coverage is supposed to be “Good,” right? Sure, if you take the time to read AT&Ts own definition of “Good,” which says that at best, I get possibly some in building-coverage. And that’s GOOD. Maybe I need to stand in the street, where the signal strength should be sufficient.