Virgin EDGE and Magaliesburg coverage

Hi
Does anyone have EDGE coverage with Virgin in the Magaliesburg (town) area? If not, is Virgin going to introduce this here, I see MTN has EDGE coverage but I don't wish to support them as they already get enough money out of me on my other cell phone! Telkom suffers big time with cable theft in this area (as soon as the cables are replaced they are gone again!!) so we are forced to rely upon our cell phones and GPRS. Has anyone in this area or an equally rural area tried some form of external aerial/antenna?
Thanks
James

Probably no Magaliesburg EDGE

My understanding is that Virgin (i.e. Cell C) is not currently offering EDGE in this area -- I live on the 'other' side of the mountain range from you, near Buffelspoort Dam, where we are well served on Virgin by GPRS only, from the Nooitgedacht tower (and others). Except on the odd occasions when it goes down.

To improve signal strength I bought (under R1K) and installed a specific Poynting data antenna for my computer datacard, which helped enormously, and just very occasionally it seems to want to switch to a very weak EDGE signal (as shown by the different-coloured LED display on the datacard), but I was told this is some sort of 'ghost' effect and not a conscious Virgin/CellC transmission.

Given the huge price differential between Virgin and the big boys, chugging along at approx. 56K with GPRS is just fine by me, and for many others; living out in the bundu as we do, high-speed is probably never going to be an option anyhow.

Thanks for advice

Hi
Thanks for the advice, I was hoping that by now we would have been covered by at least EDGE as the area is fast becoming a tourism destination but I guess its just a fantasy!
Will try the external antenna, the lady said that they would refund me if there was no real increase in signal. Do you know what sort of increase in speed you get with the antenna?