I has Verizon. Their biggest strength was always the network and after they got the Droid line, I personally wouldn't pick any other carrier. The only downside is expense; I'm paying about $30/month in data alone and they do have a habit of nickel and diming value added services like visual voicemail (like any other carrier.) And now they got the iPhone too...if you could afford Verizon I highly recommend it.
So what exactly does visual voice mail do? --Edit. Oh I just looked it. You can get that for free with Google Voice. The Google Voice app with automagicly configure the call forwarding settings to send people to the Google voice voicemail instead of your carriers.
I do and I always have dropped calls and recently my phone broke and litterally NO ONE would help me. I was run in circles for about a week before just giving up and buying a new phone.