What's the best Cell Plan?

[jage]

I'm in the stone ages with a minutes only plan from Verizon. We had to check into a flight once and two minutes using the Internet cost around $40...

So for coverage and travelling what is the best phone and data plan? We're currently in for about $90/mo for two phones and would like to save money by switching to one.

[scatter]

That's a tough one Jage. I have Version as I've found it to have the best coverage where we mostly travel in the west. That being said, there is no coverage at my house. Gotta drive a half mile away for service. We have one phone with the western U.S. plan. 350 minutes at $35/month.
Works for us.

[surfgeek33]

We found AT&T to be really really nice to have on road trips. When we had our Long Beach, CA to Banff, Canada trip, we had signal about 99.9% of the time. Even in Canada!

[jage]

ooooh AT&T has the iPhone....

Oh, wait, saving money. Saving.

[MikeB]

I haven't checked it lately, but last time I renewed my contract, Sprint had by far the best deal on internet use if using the internet via your cell phone is important to you. I use it quite a bit, and am happy. I find that overall Sprint has fine coverage in developed areas and near Interstates/divided highways, but isn't the best for service in remote areas. But I have free roaming, so can piggyback off of other networks in those areas (if there's any phone service at all).

I've had Sprint long enough that they fall all over themselves to toss in free stuff as an incentive to renew whenever my contract runs out, so I am not entirely unbiased, I suspect. But getting internet over my phone sure is handy!

[yakhlr]

AT&T service works really well for us plus I get to use my iphone and every other idevice. Actually the coverage is good and I have a mini computor with me all the time.

Henry

[Greg In Austin]

Jage,

I will chime in for AT&T also.

I travel for work on top of the SMB travel. We have found that our AT&T aircard works wonderfully well for work and play. We also have two Blueberries in the family and both have data plans. They have also proved to function well on the AT&T network. We also saved a little money by putting both phones on a family plan that also has rollever minutes. The extra bonus was the fact that the Blueberry messenger service does not cost extra and thus we could use fewer text messages.

That was the good part. Here is the bad.... I was an AT&T customer before it was Cingular. We ported a number to AT&T and then had billing issues for a year after they finally bribed us to get a new number to replace the one they could not port. We finally switched to Cingular about two weeks before they went back to being AT&T. We have had numerous billing and customer service issues over the past 4 years, but AT&T ultimately always came through in a manner that kept me as a customer.

[WOOT]

AT&T Fan Here! We have several phones on our plan, to include the iphone & we get great service. No complaints here. It's nice to pull out the iphone & check the web for information when we are out on the road. State Park information, weather & road conditions, phone numbers if you need them. We use the web feature "EVERY" time we are out.

WOOT...........

[kinewave]

Jage, go for AT&T, hands down. For travel, they can't be beat. Along with what everyone else mentioned, remember that AT&T (along with T-Mobile) are the only GSM band providers in the US. What that means when you travel is that you get to keep your phone, and it works on all the overseas carriers bands. I add a $5.99 international plan option to my plan and that drops the rates significantly when traveling overseas. And the Iphone kicks ass.

[bluedog225]

Jage

Have a look at this frugal phone thread from the Vandwellers Yahoo group. These guys have a huge posting volume. Really interesting stuff.

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Van ... sage/34127

Tom