MooseMan3000

Wrong on all counts.

First things first: prepaid phones blow.

Reason #1: no roaming. You can ONLY use your phone company's towers, which means your coverage will NEVER match that of a contract phone. T-Mobile prepaid phones use T-Mobile towers ONLY. Go Phones use Cingular towers ONLY. With a contract phone, you can roam on other companies' towers, usually at no extra cost to you (unless you go with a regional plan, which is generally a bad move).

Reason #2: They're more expensive. With no free nights and weekends on MOST plans (some of the Verizon InPulse have free nights, some of the Cingular Go Phone have free nights and weekends/free Cingular to Cingular calling), you are using minutes every time you call someone and every time someone calls you. Cheapest you can possibly get is $.10/minute. The MOST EXPENSIVE contract phone you can get works out to less than $.09 a minute, plus you get free nights and weekends, and free in-network calling. If you use the phone more than about 5 minutes a day (that's five calls, even if they only last 3 seconds each - prepaid rounds up), prepay is more expensive than contract.

Reason #3: Shitty phones (usually). For the most part, a prepaid phone is one that never sold well on a contract. So companies had a bunch leftover in their warehouses, so they converted them over to prepay. You pay more for an old phone that was never very good to begin with only so that you can get raped with the minutes.

Reason #4: Bad customer support. If you don't have a contract, you get pushed over to the most retarded, inept customer service department in existence. Talking to Cingular customer support and Go Phone customer support is night and day. If you have a broken prepay phone, good luck getting any help with it.


As far as the companies go:

T-Mobile is rated the best because it gets you the most minutes for the money. On most of their high-minute plans, however, you don't get free nights and weekends, and they often charge long distance. Furthermore, their coverage is the worst of the bunch. Of course, with a contract phone, you can use other companies' towers, so this is sort of a moot point. On a prepay however, watch out.

US Cellular: Smaller carrier. Again, more minutes for the money, but your coverage suffers. Many of the plans you get through US Cellular are regional plans, which means if you ever call long distance, or if you ever travel (like, out of your county), you get raped in the ass with roaming charges. Hell, sometimes even when you roam within your home area you get roaming charges. Definitely not a good choice.

Verizon: Right now, the best coverage out there in most places. So what do they do about it? They advertise over and over and over that they have the best coverage, but they don't ever do anything to defend that title. Example: Last year in Maine, Cingular built 9 towers. In the past two years, Verizon has built two. In Maine, Cingular already had better coverage. Now it's even betterer. Now that Cingular has all of the former AT&T towers, they're in the process of converting them from TDMA over to GSM, as well as building new ones where AT&T had the rights to build, and their coverage is getting better daily. On the plus side, Verizon sells mostly national plans, so there's no roaming anywhere, as well as free long distance. One of the best carriers.

Cingular: Identical rate plans to Verizon, except they have the rollover minutes. Any unused minutes go over to your next month, and they don't expire. Free Cingular to Cingular calling, and since they are now the biggest wireless company (54 million - 1 in 6 Americans, roughly), chances are that's a good deal of free calling. Their plans are also national plans, which means no roaming anywhere on the network, no long distance charges, etc. Cingular has also made a special effort to make sure that ALL of their roaming partners have upgraded towers. What does that mean for you? Where ever you can use the phone, you can use ALL the features of that phone. With other carriers, you can usually make a call when you're roaming, but you often can't check voice mail, you can't go online, you can't use many of the carrier-specific features. Again, this isn't true always, but with Cingular you can always use all the features.



Next part of the equation: GSM/CDMA? I'm going to leave out iDen and TDMA for now, because they sort of suck. Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular: CDMA. Cingular, T-Mobile: GSM. Alltell: I don't know, because we don't have them here.

What's the difference? The most relevant difference is that GSM is a more popular technology worldwide. With the notable exception of China, just about everywhere else in the world uses GSM. This means that your quad band Cingular or T-Mobile phone will work in most places in Europe, in Japan, in most places in the Middle East, right when you step off the plane.

This ALSO means that, because there's a larger market, cell phone manufacturers (Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, etc) make phones for GSM first. I'm sure you're familiar with the RAZR. Cingular's flagship phone for a year or so now. T-Mobile's had it just as long. Verizon and US Cellular got it a month ago, because Motorola just got around to converting it over to a CDMA phone. GSM companies almost always have the newest technology.

The other notable part of the technology: SIM cards. In a GSM phone, all your account information is stored in a small flash media card, called a SIM card or Smart Chip (depending on who you ask). What does this mean for you? If your phone breaks and you need to replace it, all you do is take the SIM card out and put it in the new phone. No programming required. You have your phone book, address book, and account information all already in the new phone. CDMA phones are identified by ESNs, which means that you need to program your phone specifically to work with the network (which, with many carriers *cough Sprint/Verizon, cough*) extends your contract another two years every time you do it. Verizon also charges you $20 just to switch it out. Also, you have to transfer all your contact info manually.


So I think you can probably figure out which company I have my phone with. And you can probably also tell that I sell phones for a living. Heh.


JumpinJesus: As far as your experience with Cingular goes, I'm sorry to hear that, but I've had none of the same problems you have. The only person I know that drops calls with them only drops them because he has a bad phone. The software version in his phone is simply incompatable for whatever reason, and he loses his connection regularly. I can make calls with no trouble everywhere he drops them, so it's not the network.

Then, as far as T-Mobile being one of the best, with Cingular being one of the worst, if you read my explanation of roaming, you'll know that's simply not possible. On a contract phone, they roam on each other's towers in most places, so the coverage should be identical.



If you have to go prepaid, go with Go Phone. It's sort of a toss up between Verizon InPulse and Cingular Go Phone, but I think Go Phone wins.

Coverage will be very similar, with Verizon winning by a very small margin.

Plans look similar at first: $1/day connection fee, $.10 a minute.

The differences? Verizon charges you that dollar a day no matter what (even when you don't use the phone), Cingular only charges it on days when calls are made or received. With Verizon, you get free nights. (Not free weekends, mind you.) With Cingular, you get free Cingular to Cingular calling. Sort of a trade off there.

With both of them, the phones suck, for the reason I explained above. But Cingular has SIM cards, which makes changing phones a breeze.

Don't go with any other prepay - the coverage will bite you in the ass.

The only prepay phone that gets better coverage than Cingular or Verizon is TracFone. The reason? TracFone has no towers. So instead, they rent every other companies' towers. This means that their phones will work in more places than other prepay options, but you also pay for it. The best POSSIBLE rate you can get with them is $.10/minute, but that's only if you buy the $80 card, and you have the $130 double minute card. Plus, their customer service is the absolute worst, bar none. I swear, there's one guy named Raul who I get every time I call. I'm pretty sure he's the only one that works there.


So I think I've flooded you with enough information for now. If you have any more questions, I'll be happy to answer them.