ALBIN -- In the town of Albin, there’s probably one issue that most people agree on: Cell phone service.

Many people who live in this town of 120 people near the Nebraska border own one.

“I use it to get a hold of my wife in Wal-Mart,” said Bill Holgerson.

But when he’s home, the cell phone stays in the pickup, he said. “We don’t rely on it for anything.”

That’s because in Albin, it’s useless. There are no cell phone towers to serve the customers. Albin is a dead zone.

A couple years ago, there was talk around town that Verizon planned to put up a tower. No one’s sure if that was fact or just wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, wireless communication in these parts is about a decade behind the times.

Times when your ride honks the horn when he arrives -- or gets out and rings the doorbell, if he’s polite.

Times when talking about canceling your phone service -- the wired-to-the-wall kind -- sounds like a crazy and dumb idea.

Times when using a cell phone means keeping a map in your head of the sweet spots around town. It could be in your driveway. On top of that hill. Or if you face the kitchen window ju-u-u-ust so, maybe one little bar will pop up on the screen. Don’t move your head or you’ll drop the call.

“You kind of learn the spots after awhile,” said Jim Sorensen.

Sorenson said the local landline provider is great -- he doesn’t want to knock them. And, yes, he knows that everyone survived civilization thus far without cell phones. And he knows it’s very expensive for a cell phone company to put up a tower n they have to go where the people are.

“But in this day and age, the cell phone is it,” Sorensen said. “It would be great to have good service in Albin.”

Many point out that Pine Bluffs, a larger town to the south -- and right on the heavily traveled Interstate 80 -- has a tower. Even the town of LaGrange, a town to the north that’s about Albin’s size, has one.

It’s frustrating, being unable to enjoy the full service they pay for.

Sorensen and his wife have grown children “scattered to the four winds.” When they call home, they use their cell phones because that’s all they have.

Because they have the same carrier, he would be able to talk to them all he liked for free -- if Albin had a cell tower.

And there’s Kelly Krakow, who owns an insurance agency in Torrington.

He’s just a few miles outside of LaGrange when he enters “the void.” If someone calls and leaves a voicemail message, it may be two to three days before his phone buzzes an alert.

“It would be nice if they could figure something out, which they should,” he said. “I think there’s quite a bit of high ground -- I think it would work.”

But Holgerson has noticed some Union Wireless trucks parked out by an old tower near his house.

For the residents of Albin, this means good news and bad news.

The good news: “They should have signal relatively soon,” said Jim Woody, who is on the management team of Union Wireless, a Wyoming company.

They’re leasing a Qwest tower. Cell service should be online no later than the end of April, Wood says. It may even come up in the next couple of weeks.

This is a GSM site. It is a type of cell-phone technology that’s widely used in Europe and Asia and by Union Wireless.

But most American companies, like Verizon, embrace CDMA technology.

Which takes us to the the bad news: That means if you subscribe to Verizon and many other companies, your phone probably still won’t work well in Albin, Woody said.

But Verizon spokesman Bob Kelley said according to their network team, Albin is on the radar screen. A tower could be up two to three years from now. But that depends on “capital budgets and development plans.”

Why is it so hard to get a cell phone tower?

Rob Hurless is Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s energy and telecommunications policy adviser. He said unlike the landline companies, cell phone companies are not obliged to provide service.

“The marketplace determines where the service is going to be,” Hurless said. Population the factor.

A typical cell site costs $600,000 to put up, Kelley said. But that doesn’t include the monthly lease of the land, maintenance and electricity.

In 2007, Verizon added 10 new cell sites in Wyoming, a $20 million investment.

“It’s not an inexpensive proposition,” Kelley said.

Meanwhile, Albin waits.

With apologies to Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good cell phone must be in want of a signal.