Even though the Voice coverage bar indicates 1-3 bars usually, voice reception seems fine. Too early to tell if we'll be missing calls, text messages, or will get a lot of dropped calls, but so far voice seems fine, so I don't think we'll need the Airwave.
It's the 3G coverage that is almost non-existent, and of course the speed is pathetically slow. I'd read a study where they compared the different 3G, 4G speeds (WiMax for Sprint at that time), and Sprint's 3G was averaging 0.5 megabits/sec downloads, and that's roughly what we're getting when we can get a signal. Of course their LTE should be much faster than that, but I'm not too confident that the coverage will really increase since it's the same spectrum they're using, just a different standard. I don't know enough about LTE versus EVDO to know how much better coverage LTE will truly get.