So, I live in Baton Rouge, and even though Cingular and other companies have supposedly been re-building all of the cell phone towers, Cell Phones still are not working like they are supposed to. So, is there anything that I can do to improve my cell-phone’s reception?
Just guessing completely here on inadequate information, but could you add an antenna?
My cell phone gets crappy reception, and I was told by the company that I’d either need to invest in a cell phone with a better antenna or buy an antenna attachment.
Honestly: Get an old analog Motorola “bag phone”. You’ll have shitload more power with it (3 watts vs. .67 watts [normal for most cell phones now]). Signal quality wont be the best, but you should get longer range.
Just as a caveat you might want to make sure that the pricing plans for analog service make financial sense. The deal rates that many vendors offer for the standard (digital service + digital phone) packages do not apply if an analog phone is used on the system.
I find that I get significantly better reception if I plug my cell into a car-phone configuration. The antenna on the car is way, way bigger than my cell, and I’d assume that has something to do with it. (My brother spent hours sitting in my mom’s car this summer, on our family’s vacation in rural Maine, talking to a girl he’d fallen for right before we left - it was the only way he could get reliable reception. Of course, I never mocked him for this. 
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