While major wireless carriers report that service in New Orleans has been restored to “normal or near-normal” conditions, owners of wireless phones with New Orleans (504) telephone numbers tell a different story.

“Near normal my ass,” said a Cingular Wireless subscriber who did not give her name. “There are still large sections of the city where [our phones] don’t work at all,” she said.

Her boyfriend, who also did not give his name, said, “My phone only makes and receives calls some of the time, and the voicemail doesn’t always pick up.”

She said they were in New Orleans Monday to attempt to recover some of their possessions from their house, which was moldy and waterlogged.

Wireless phones must route all calls through switching facilities serving the phone’s home area code, even when the phone is outside the local area.

He had considered call forwarding, but it proved about as reliable as the service generally. “Not reliable,” he said.

So the option of a different number based in a different area code was out.

“They told me I’d have to get a Kansas City number,” he said of a Cingular Wireless store he’d visited. “Nobody would be able to reach me.”

Many New Orleans subscribers report still having intermittent trouble with their wireless phones, even after a month. Carriers are generally only able to offer a temporary number in a different area code, but cannot guarantee call forwarding from the old number to the new one.

As of Wednesday, all of New Orleans was reportedly drained of water, but switching facilities still need to be restored to service. Facilities may need “refurbishment, decontamination and/or complete replacement,” said Bill Oliver, president of BellSouth’s Louisiana operations.

A statement posted on Cingular’s Web site reads, “While wireless service has been restored in many areas, there is more demand on wireless service and calling volumes have more than doubled, resulting in some congestion on our network. If you receive a fast busy or ‘your call cannot be completed at this time’ recording when trying to make a voice call, wait 10 seconds before redialing. This allows the original call data to clear the network before you try again.”

Cingular Wireless had not posted an update to the site since Sep. 28.

Representatives of Cingular Wireless were not available for comment.