I’ll just get the short version out quickly:  You can stream Internet radio non-stop from Pittsburgh to Philly with very little interruption using Verizon’s data service.  That’s about 5 hours of driving without having to turn on the radio.

The long version is not much worse.  Although there is no EV-DO coverage more than about a half hour outside of Pittsburgh or Philly, 1xRTT is available and very consistent.  This is enough bandwidth to stream 64kbps and less streams the entire way.

Surprisingly enough, 64kbps AAC streams are of pretty decent quality.  I find them better than mp3, and as acceptable to my ears as FM radio.

Resco Pocket Radio has 6 quick preset buttons.  I kept several set to 64kbps streams and others to 120-160 for when I got into EV-DO range.  The big problem was although 1XRTT would be used automatically when I lost EV-DO coverage, my phone would not connect to EV-DO if there was active use of a 1xRTT connection.  Therefore, if I suspected that I was back in an EV-DO area, I would have to kill the radio and let it sit for a bit
before it would use it.  I don’t know if that’s a CDMA limitation or what.

In summary, I would say if you stuck with 64kbps streams or less, you would experience a total of at most 10 minutes of dropout on a 5 hour drive from Pittsburgh to Philly using Verizon’s data service.  I’d say that’s pretty good, wouldn’t you?  It’s certainly stepping out of the shadow of early-adopter reliability in my book.  However, if you want to use the phone while driving, I suggest you have a passenger to get it unhooked for you and start up bluetooth or plug in a headset.  It is anything
but ergonomic switching back and forth from radio to phone.

Here’s a pic of my pocket PC setup taken before I started out.  The plug on the left is for my GPS.  Ignore that.  The rest is USB power and a line in to my stereo.  I was really wishing for Bluetooth  A2DP here to make the setup cleaner. Oh, and… ahem… wireless DC power.