The OP was pretty enthusiastic about how it dramatically affected his service, and there is plenty of mis-information on the internet ( see my post above for instance
) - but it should be important to point out that
*228 (option 2) only affects roaming, not Verizon's own network. If the OP truly got better service, his phone must have started roaming immediately after the PRL update. Either that or there is some sort of odd behavior which can happen if a mobile handset thinks another carrier's network is in it's (outdated) PRL, and the handset is in an area with overlapping cells from both Verizon and the other carrier. That seems hard to believe, though.
Thanks for correcting me.
eu1