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Ha, I know what you're talking about exactly! When I was looking for a new phone (I'm in Salt Lake City, Utah) there is a provider in our area called Cricket

They basically offer unlimited everything for 'bout $45 and some change from taxes. And its all under no contract at all. I have unlimited local, unlimited long distances, and unlimited text and pix (which I use to send free ringtones to myself :)).

Oh, they might be in your area too, because they are a subsidiary of Leap Wireless.
Thats my two cents.

-Brandom

We in pittsburgh have a company call cricket that does that alread, but you can only do local calls. But I don't like the fact that you can not use it for data. So I am with T-mobile but they have a great plan that I use.

It's unlimited local calling for $33. I travel too much much to use it (their network is only in certain cities) but I have alot of friends that like it. It's a good replacement for a home phone, even if you talk alot. The bonus is, telemarketers can't call you.

http://www.cricketcommunications.com/default.asp

Me? I've been a sprint pcs customer for over 4 years. Their rates don't seem to be keeping up with their competitors though. If they don't have the ability to have unlimited local minutes and nationwide roam (for an extra fee of course) by next nov when the cell number portability law (finally) goes into effect. I'll switch. Till then, I'll hang on.

I'll ignore your blatant trolls about Americans not educating themselves about products, but I will say this: Voicestream sucks. Their service is horrendous, their customer support sucks, and just because they're a GSM provider doesn't make them absolutely superior to everything else. There are many more barometers to cell service quality other than the multiplexing protocol they use. A vast majority of americans don't give a rat's ass about that.

For one thing, CDMA offers a far, far higher capacity than GSM. While I'll agree that GSM has better voice quality, CDMA providers are far cheaper. In my part of the USA, you can get unlimited calling with Cricket for US$32.95/mo with no credit checks or contracts. Cricket uses CDMA, and this sort of value would be impossible with GSM.

Moreover, a vast majority of americans live within metropolitan areas, where there is digital service (as well as long interstate highways), which is all fine and good. I'd rather pay for service that'll work where I am, not wherever Joe BFE decides to live. Besides, there's analog coverage over about 99% of the mainland US.

... because YOUR company doesn't have a Cell tower there, because every company has thier own
system....

Erm. You need to learn about interconnection agreements. Qwest (a western United States provider) has an interconnection agreement with Alltel, a national provider. Qwest will hop on Alltel's network where Qwest towers don't exist. These agreements are fairly common in the United States. Also, every company does not have their own system. The only single-carrier system I can think of is Nextel, a specialised business-targetted provider. AT&T, Cingular, Alaska Wireless use TDMA. Alltel, Qwest, Verizon, Airtouch, Cricket, Sprint, and probably a few more all use CDMA. Voicestream, Pac-Bell, and certain chunks of Cingular also use GSM.

Multiple systems are actually better for the customer. Nextel phones can be used like walkie-talkies, Cricket takes advantage of CDMA's cell-hopping and capacity technologies to offer a fabulous service.

And lastly, New York City? Bah. Your trolls phase me not.

I must admit that I'm impressed at Verizon's ingenuity here. I really didn't think it was going to be feasible to find a way to do per-minute pricing for a packet service, but I underestimated the company's ability to misunderstand the utility of packet data.

Whether it's the entertainment industry or the telecom industry, consumer preference is pretty clear: predictable costs drive product acceptance. The cellular industry, however, is justly famous for deliberately making costs hard to understand, let alone predict.

This pricing scheme is doubly insulting from a CDMA carrier; as those who are familiar with CDMA are aware, it's far and away the most bandwidth-efficient wireless communications system in widespread use. There's at least one carrier that's been quite successful in using CDMA technology to offer a truly flat-rate all-you-can-talk local calling service in a number of areas in the U.S. [Important disclaimer: I work for the aforementioned carrier's parent company, but don't speak for it in this forum; I'm mentioning the service here in order to illustrate a point, not advertise the service. If you live in a coverage area, you've heard about it already, I'm sure...]

Packet data can be even more bandwidth-efficient than voice traffic since the latency requirements are relaxed considerably, so it seems to me that there's really no excuse for Verizon to be billing for this service in such a boneheaded way.

There's already one cellular company that does this, at least for local phone calls. They seem to be playing in secondary markets, though, and there's no roaming.