J.D. Power and Associates has released its 2007 Wireless Call Quality Performance Study and the carriers are getting ready to either hype the findings or spin them away, depending on how they fared. On to the rankings.Verizon Wireless came out on top, taking the lead in four of the six U.S. regions covered and tying with Qwest for highest in a fifth.

J.D. Power's latest study ranked Sprint Nextel in last place in the Mid-Atlantic and Southwest regions.

Of course, Sprint might have a thing or two to say about this latest call quality ranking. Last month, a study from mindWireless looked at 80 million points of caller data from Jan. 1, 2006, to June 30, 2006, and rated Sprint's CDMA network as the network with the fewest dropped calls. That study placed Verizon Wireless in the middle of the major U.S. carriers in terms of dropped calls and duplicate calls.

The J.D. Power and Associates study found that as U.S. carriers upgrade to 3G networks, the overall call quality across the wireless industry has improved.

What do you think? Is Verizon Wireless really the best carrier in the United States in terms of call quality? Or is there that much of a difference between any of the carriers? And if your carrier has gone 3G, have you noticed that your phone calls have improved?