Mohtalim

So the girl is saying it's hard to reach me and maybe I should get a cell phone. I looked around for prepaid phone and tmobile seems to have the best deal. Can anyone tell me about their service, or the service of their provider?

Also when they say no roaming, does that mean you will be charged extra for roaming, not have to pay extra for roaming, or not allowed to use the service outside the area?

It usually means that you can use the phone anywhere in the country that tmobile's network exists for a flat rate. If tmobile has agreements with other companies to provide out-of-network service (like the old analog mode), then you will probably still have to pay an additional fee.

As I recall, Verizon was generally considered to have to best overall coverage (as of nine months ago), but other providers were able to edge them out in certain markets. For instance, Sprint was best in metro Atlanta. I'd suggest talking to your coworkers and neighbors to see what their experiences with providers have been in the Little Rock area.

I use(d) AT&T's old-school prepaid plan. I got pretty good reception everywhere I used it except inside my apartment and the middle of the Vegas airport. I lost that phone in December and haven't gotten around to replacing it. I'm hoping they'll just transfer my minutes over to a new phone and continue with the original plan (they're good for another couple months). However, now that they're mostly Cingular they may try to force me to change to one of their crappy prepaid plans.

T-Mobile has its own network. We picked them because they offered GPRS and because they covered both Atlanta and Portland.

It's easy to look up nationwide coverage, but nothing will tell you local coverage unless you go to the places you want signal and ask people how their reception is.

I guess I have to talk to my co-worker then.

George wrote:I use(d) AT&T's old-school prepaid plan. I got pretty good reception everywhere I used it except inside my apartment and the middle of the Vegas airport. I lost that phone in December and haven't gotten around to replacing it. I'm hoping they'll just transfer my minutes over to a new phone and continue with the original plan (they're good for another couple months). However, now that they're mostly Cingular they may try to force me to change to one of their crappy prepaid plans.

You can still get AT&T pre-paid phones at Target. I'm in the process of replacing my AT&T phone and have resorted to eBay to get one. I could probably buy a pre-paid phone and get them to code the SIM card back to my regular plan, but the phones at Target are kinda crappy and big.