No, for us it wasn't that much of a problem at all - but we'd made similar trips using Verizon as our carrier, so we were expecting a similar area of coverage. Since this wasn't really advertised to us up front, it gave us the perception that the service was sub-par in comparison to other offerings.

That said, if I needed a month of stop-gap coverage on the cheap, I'd definitely use the service again.

Edit: Oh, and we've just moved to Christchurch. I think it's a similar story here w/ coverage between cities, but obviously the distances involved are much, much smaller.