I have a friend from Orlando and she uses Verizon and loves them. She has the whole data plan too. Hubby and I looked into possibly changing to them and found them to be a little expensive. Up in SC where we just moved from a lot of people had At and t but signal was horrible there. My friend had to use a free texting app on her Iphone just so she could use it half the time because she could never get a signal to talk or use regular texting! She just finally broke down and switched to Verizon I think.
We use Sprint and have had them for 6+ yrs. We were just living in SC and travel to IN to see family and go camping and haven't ever really had signal problems except in where you'd expect them. There customer service can be a pain in the rear sometimes but I normally get what ever fixed with them. We don't have a date plan but we do have unlimited text/pic mail, 3 phones and 1500 min and pay a little over a hundred a month!! They do offer some nice discounts depending on who your employer is so worth checking into. I do think they offer a full data plan for about 70 a month if I've heard right. I know a lot of people we know here said to stay away from Metro because the don't work well.
Good luck and happy phone shopping!!
S.