I have 2 friends with iphones and the reception in my area (provided by AT&T) is garbage. I laugh at them all the time about how bad it really is. In fact we were laughing yesterday about how they were talking to each other earlier in the day and the call got dropped.

I realize that this is most likely a service issue and not the phone, but you really need to find out how good the service provider is in the area you will be using your iPhone. When my friend purchased the iPhone he went from Verizon to AT&T and his reception went downhill bigtime.