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Nope - it was closer to 300-500rs a minute. Granted, that was on a mobile phone and not a land line, but the phone bill was high enough I got to grovel to our CFO - two months was more than what I paid for a down payment on my house. Part of the problem was I had a US SIM chip and not a local SIM. Things were much better when I returned with an unlocked mobile.

(the base rate for tmobile is 1.60 USD, ~3 USD/minute roaming. Things got scary, however, if you wandered off the 'partner' network and the blackberry was set for automatic rather than manual network selection. In New Delhi, it would change networks on every call...)

When I shopped, I looked at Cingular and T-Mobile's prepaid plans. At least in my area, Cingular's two prepaid plans include a 10 cents per minute, 1 dollar per day plan (I agree, not very useful, though perhaps in some situations) and a 25 cent per minute plan without the daily fee. Minutes in $25-$75 chunks expire after 90 days, with $100 dollar chunks lasting a year.

T-Mobile's prepaid plan has a graduated pay scale as low as 10 cents per minute if you buy minutes in chunks of $100, and as high as 30 cents in chunks of $10. Expiration is 90 days at the $25-50 level. If you've bought enough minutes to be "gold" customer (1000 minutes I believe), then any chunk of minutes lasts a one year. The graduated pricing still applies but gets slightly cheaper with 10 cents still being the cheapest in $100 chunks ($50 buys at 11 cents per min; $25, 17 cents per).

I believe both Cingular and T-Mobile carry over unused minutes as long as you buy new minutes before the old ones expire. Note that number portability does not apply to prepaid accounts, at least T-Mobile told me I could not transfer my previous cell number.

I decided on T-Mobile, brought my unlocked GSM phone to a T-Mobile store, and had no troubles (though some kiosks did not carry prepaid plans; I had to go to my town's main store).

Some areas can get really cheap pre-paid old-tech these days. But without a location, I'll assume you want something that could be just about anyplace in the U.S.

If you need the best national coverage, it will end up costing you at least $8/month to keep alive a plan from. (That's CDMA or TDMA... Tracfone has a newer setup using GSM, but that will cost more money and much worse coverage.) Get a referral from someone before activating, you'll get free minutes and so will they. Starter kit with phone and a few minutes will cost you $20 on up. That's about the cheapest way to get started, but beware that you have to use their phone, and their phones only work with tracfone.

The cheapest national option I've found is if t-mobile has prepaid coverage where you need it (most metro areas, interstate highways, etc). The coverage map on is really good, but do not confuse the prepaid map with the post-paid contract map. Buy a starter kit for about $30-40 (walmart or after rebate, better if you watch slickdeals or fatwallet) or more depending on what phone you want (any t-mobile or unlocked GSM phone with U.S. frequency bands will work if you just buy a prepaid sim on e.g. e-bay), and buy a $100 refill (1000 minutes, use a coupon at e.g. staples or online discount reseller and get it for $80). Those minutes will last for a year, so under $9/month (plus the phone) for 1000 minutes total. It's a HUGE win in year two IFF you don't need minutes. A $10 card will keep your minutes alive for another year, or under $0.10 per month.

Check out the best prepaid plan comparison I've seen.

sdb

P.S. Wife and I have t-mobile prepaid. Several members of my extended family have tracfone. I hate that t-mobile started charging for incoming SMS/MMS messages, but haven't found anything better enough to be worth switching or even to recommend instead.

About six months ago, I got my wife (who barely uses any minutes) a T-Mobile pre-paid phone. $100 gets you 1000 minutes and they don't expire for the whole year. Your challenge becomes remembering to recharge, a year later! Here's the link:

http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/default.aspx?pl ancategory=4

T-mobile may not be the biggest but they are a carrier in the US and they have the SDA and MDA. Verizon has the Samsung SCH-i730 and XV6700. I don't think Cingular carries any right now but they're supposed to be getting an HTC and maybe a Nokia model that should have wifi.

Just trying to educate here, we're like the third world of cellular here in the US, so the pickings are slim.

T-mobile may not be the biggest but they are a carrier in the US and they have the SDA and MDA. Verizon has the Samsung SCH-i730 and XV6700. I don't think Cingular carries any right now but they're supposed to be getting an HTC and maybe a Nokia model that should have wifi.

Just trying to educate here, we're like the third world of cellular here in the US, so the pickings are slim.

Easy. Anyone under the age of 18 -- with virtually no exception.

In my experience, many problems with family harmony can be either traced back to cell phone use -- or cell phones helped compound the problem.

I don't think ANYONE should have a cell phone until they are emancipated *AND* pay for the damn thing themselves.

That said: I've seen the FireFly -- and T-Mobile's new "kidconnect plan". Both look very interesting and may force me to rethink my position.

From the responses I have seen posted, I would like to clear up a few facts ...
1. Calls can overlap -- call waiting, call conferencing ... if you (A) have a conversation with (B) and (C) calls, you tell (B) you need to talk to (C) and switch the call over. Problem arises when (B) doesn't bother to hang up and the call overlaps...
2. T-mobile will not block a number - their system is not set up that way.
3. Just because the caller ID shows up as 'Number unavailable' doesn't mean you don't know who it is ... if the cell phone identifies as an unknown caller but matches the number to a contact in your phone book, the contact's name will show up...
4. If a rep really did hang up on you and you remember the dates/times, you can file a complaint with another rep who has the ability to look at the notes from your previous calls and find out who you spoke to. The reps don't hang up on customers because they feel like it, there is normally a 3 strikes warning if you start using bad language or a dead air script if they cannot hear you. If they hang up on you, it is immediately flagged so its not in the rep's best interest to ever disconnect without following the proper chain.
5. If you are really worried about cloning, go to the t-mobile website http://www.t-mobile.com/Contact.aspx and write a letter or e-mail or send us a fax with a detailed description of what you think has happened.

The total telecom costs are more competitive and come out less expensive in a system like ours (North America - mobile party pays for incoming and terminating calls; no landline to mobile termination fees).

In the UK (and most other countries), the landline-to-mobile rate is fixed at a high price. The mobile companies have no strong incentive to lower their termination fees, because they're not charging "their" customers - it's the other schmucks (landline customers) who get the shaft (customers they want to steal away from landline!). Of course there could be some limited competition on the landline side to get the "lowest" mobile termination fees, but in the end the landline carriers still have to negotiate that with the mobile provider. How much would 1000 minutes cost from landline to mobile in the UK? £36.10 - £215.40, depending on the carrier and time-of-day?

In the North American system, the entire minute bucket of incoming and outgoing minutes is negotiated between the mobile provider and their direct customer. Therefore, there is significant competition between carriers to provide the lowest total price. In other words, when you select a carrier here, you are negotiating the price on both sides. Over there, you are only negotiating the outgoing side of the equation (for the most part). How much would 1000 minutes (either direction) cost in the US? $40 (or free on nights/weekends)?

In the future, it seems like unlimited wireless is a distinct possibility (it already exists in my market!). In North America, that means that there will be no mobile-related charges whatsoever for incoming or outgoing. Do you think that foreign carriers will let go of mobile termination fees even if/when outgoing calls become free (unlimited)? In my case, I could pay $70/month and nobody would pay any per-minute fees to or from my phone!

That $20 lasts me barely a week, so when all the crap is added up it turns out to be TWELVE times as expensive as the service I was used to. And on top of that, of course, coverage SUCKS. And when I'm in an area with no coverage at all for a few weeks, I come back, and find that my prepaid phone, with a positive balance, has been turned off - apparently because one is required to add money every month whether you're using it or not, or else you lose it.

This was with T-Mobile, who were reputed to have by far the best coverage in the area I was in, by the way.

I have a T-mobile prepaid too and upgrade with $100 increments, which stay valid for a year, and give you 1000 minutes of airtime. $0.10/minute is pretty reasonable for a prepaid phone, methinks.

I highly suggest you look at T-Mobile's coverage map:
http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/

There are HUGE portions of [Your State Here] that get no coverage at all.

T-Mobile only uses the 1900 MHz frequency, the other big U.S. cell providers use both 1900 & 850. (850 MHz has better range than 1900)

If you have some other GSM cell provider, you can check their frequencies & coverage area

Granted the 850 band is a big factor in building penetration, however another significant factor is simply the level of coverage in a given area. For example, T-Mobile quantifies their coverage as Fair, Good, and Great. Typically the only difference between good and great may be data transfer speeds, especially with EDGE compatible devices. However in a Fair coverage area, they do not guaranty any signal inside a building, residential or otherwise, and they put that into your contract (always read the fine print).

Check out the coverage levels at http://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/?class=coverage.

I don't know much about the IP internet side of TMO, it's outside my area. But I can tell you SMS only handles SMS. It's a dedicated node on the SS7 side of the network. That isn't to say that TMO doesn't have something on the IP side that acts as a relay. It would make sense to do it that way since many of the phones that they offer AIM service with don't have dedicated clients.

Exactly... here is the data in such a device

---
Screen Name: (AOL Screen Name)
Password: (AOL Password)
GPRS Address: http://wirelessvillage.t-mobile.com/
Text msg. number: 4670
Bearer: Automatic
Service Name: AOL
----

I presume the GPRS address is used for authentication, and the text msg number is the relay. All of this would seem to be billed under the SMS plans, not their t-zones or data plans. This is not to say that you can't run a softclient that doesn't use the relay provided your phone supported it. There is also a text msg number for ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo, though for some reason the MSN one doesn't work on my 6820 but did work on my other crappy phone.

I do wish the T-mobile relays were better documented. The SMS e-mail one has come in handy many times, and I imagine of one had the syntax would could shuttle out a message to their SMS system without being sent a message in the first place.

T-Mobile doesn't even have their own network

The other option is to go to a T-Mobile store and ask one of the sales people to help you. I have heard from more than one person that, depending on the sales person, they might let you borrow their phone to check service in certain areas.

T-Mobile has (finally) updated their MDA line with the MDA IV. It's awesome. It's pen based, keyboard based(like a sidekick mini), runs Windows Mobile 5, has transcriber support, touchscreen, everything. And it's a phone. =)

I think HP just doesn't like that their stuff isn't innovative anymore(neither is T-Mobile, it's just a rebranded HTC Wizard or Qtek 9100 or I-Mate something or other, I forget who the actual manufacturer is, but...) whereas HP has released the same old stuff for as long as I can remember. I looked at the iPaqs and they're the same as they ever were!

I'm enjoying the MDA but I know other, better ones will be coming out with other providers as well. There's always something out there, HP just can't get it right. They did it first, and did it best for awhile, but now it's over.

Well, not all phones. Not the ones that are complete shit.

Problem is that the majority of phones in the United States are complete shit. If independent game developers want to make their games accessible to the public, they have to have some way of targeting a large, easily identifiable chunk of the phone market. Otherwise it will become too difficult for potential users to see if a particular game works on the phone for which he or she is already locked into a $720 contract.

But then, if you get Verizon, again, you deserve what you get for not doing research.

It's not the independent game developers who are "not doing research"; it's the customers that the developers are trying to reach.

And you still didn't address the issue of parents who want their minor children to have a handheld machine that can play independent games but cannot make or receive voice calls to or from strangers and does not cost $720 for a 2-year contract.

I have T-Mobile [who resells Cingular] and they don't lock out much of anything

Which model of T-Mobile prepaid phone do you recommend for midlets? Given that Google search terms choosing phone midlets don't seem to result in anything, how do you suggest that I and other readers go about doing this research?

As far as design goes, I was somehting that is like a T Mobile Sidekick. The "basic" buttons (d-pad, 4 face and should buttons) on the outside with a screen in the middle. The screen would be a pivoting/rotating/flipping deal so that the touchscreen below it could be exposed for DS play, or covered for other games that don't need it. You could alos rotate it out and then flip it down so the LCDs were facing each other, potecting them from damage. I think it would be a cool design at least.

The only carrier I know of in North America with an true "unlimited" data plan is T-Mobile. I don't know how these companies expect a wireless revolution to take place when they are gouging the prices like this.

Already ehre.

$20/month with a phone plan, $30/month stand alone. Unlimited.

From what I hear, the T-Mobile sidekick II is GREAT for bathroom reading. Just get one of those suckers. http://www.t-mobile.com/promos/sidekickII.asp?WT.m c_n=Skick2_nycpeach&WT.mc_t=Other

T-Mobile Prepaid. 10 cents/minute if you spend $100. Fewer tricks than other companies. Your time extends to a new year if you spend $10 before the end of the first year, I was told.

I was not able to locate an original Nokia vibrating battery for my 5190 two years ago...

Not a problem now. http://www.google.com/search?q=nokia+5190+vibratin g+battery

Sounds like you are using tracfone. Three of my extended family does. My immediate family, though, are using t-mobile togo prepaid.

With ToGo, once you've added 1000 minutes of airtime (retail $100 but airtime value is $400-$500 depending on 'home' area) then the maintenance cost of the phone is supposedly only $10 per year. (A $10 card keeps the phone active for one year and adds 50 minutes.) http://www.t-mobile.com/prepaid/rates.asp And free incoming text messages make it a GREAT pager. :)

T-mobile does not have as good a coverage as tracfone though. :(

sdb

Um, last time I checked, http://www.t-mobile.com/ had the same logo... just the T is further to the left!

My cell phone company (the same company as yours) gives me incoming SMS messages for free. I use a prepaid account.

My cell phone company charges me $.05 for incoming too :(. My old cell phone company Sprint did the same. I always thought it would a nice evil revenge to sign someone's cellphone email address up to a mailing list.

Thanks for the response. However, the Motorola V188 is not available with the T-Mobile Pay As You Go wireless service.

Someone who is outside the U.S. a lot does not want a U.S. monthly plan. T-Mobile seems to be the best "Pay As You Go" plan for a person with that requirement.

I wonder if it would be possible to get T-Mobile to sell a V188 with pay-as-you-go?

Important: It costs only $15 to get a phone unlocked, so no need to pay a lot more for an unlocked phone, provided there are no other difficulties, such as legality. My understanding is that it is not illegal to unlock a phone.

"Are there any World-Compatible GSM cellular telephones that don't offer much beyond calling and an address book?""

Choose a quad band phone like the Motorola V330 and have it unlocked, so that it can be used with other carriers. When you arrive in another country, choose a local GSM provider, and install their proprietary module in your phone; it's easy, you can do it yourself or have the phone provider employee do it. The Motorola V330 can operate on these bands: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. That gives you the maximum opportunity in any city in the world.

It's best not to worry about minimal features. You can't fight the crazy marketing plans.

I suggest you try the T-Mobile Pay-As-You-Go Plan if you don't use a lot of minutes.

You definitely want GSM, the service is better. You definitely want a new phone, the sound quality is far better.

Ask around for someone in your city who will unlock your phone. Locking a phone without your knowledge should be illegal, companies don't warn customers that they are buying locked equipment.

What do you mean no downloadable documentation?
http://www.blackberry.com/knowledgecenterpublic/li velink.exe?func=ll&objId=8533&objAction=browse&sor t=name

or do you mean from T-Mobile?
http://support.t-mobile.com/productSelector.html?f ormFlow=manufacturerForm&selectProductManufacturer =_77ab8903-1df5-43fc-93f3-7aef59a35ba2

Which manual do you want?

I've been looking into wireless service for my shiny new Zaurus SL-C3000. T-Mobile offers unlimited internet access via GPRS for $29.99/month here:
http://www.t-mobile.com/plans/default.asp?tab=inte rnet

It won't be as fast as Sprint's 1xRTT so it may not be what you're looking for but it's much cheaper and may be faster than your current line.

I used to be a big fan of Starbucks, but lately I've completely stopped buying their coffee as they insist on charging $6/hr for their T-Mobile hotspot, while I can get free wifi at number of locally owned coffee shops around town.

I bring a lot of business to these places, and always make sure to tip well. That's money they never would have seen without the wi-fi differentiator.

--
http://joshstaiger.org/

Worst food-on-keyboard experience I had was when I left my Sidekick in my backpack with a container of Ben & Jerry's (Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough) Ice Cream. I'm sure you can imagine what happened.

I'll never forget all that time I spent on that bus trying to lick ice cream off its precious little keyboard and suck it out of the speaker.

Luckily, I'm female, so licking ice cream of spiffy techno-gadgets can be sexy, rather than gross.

DotNet does not work as advertised (EG: have you seen any commercial apps in it?)

- Dell's Website
- MIT's iLab and ShuttleTrak services
- T-Mobile's customer portal
- Infragistics website and software solutions
- Any one of the items listed in Microsoft's .NET connected directory

Or perhaps you would like to look at the massive amount of work that has gone into emulating the .NET framework with the Mono project? No, .NET is completely unsuccessful (BTW, I wrote and run an ecommerce application for my company of employ on .NET that does over $20k/day in business. Sounds like production quality to me.)

the godawful connection speed (GPRS sucks. Thanks cell phone companies!) I'll just find an open wireless access point and use Google from my laptop.

GPRS isn't *that* slow. Google is quite responsive (one of the faster sites out there while on GPRS) and I actually find myself using my hiptop more than my laptop. Something that fits in my pocket is a lot easier to do a quick Google search on than locating an access point, booting up/waking up the laptop, doing the search, and then shutting down/putting to sleep the laptop.

YMMV.

Mobile web is a luxury that will work only for those who run full operating systems on small devices, and it will work via WiFi, not any of the mobile phone (2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, whatever) networks.

Excuse me? No. It's very useful especially with a device that knows how to interact with sites that aren't specifically designed for it.

As I stated before I would hope that more webdesigners realize the need for customizable content and layout (google news, slashdot, etc) so that people who do use mobile devices can have fast load times and a pleasure using their sites.

It takes 10 minutes to change your site over to be WAP viewable and have Apache rewrite the URLs for you. If only people would take the time...

It's not 19.99, it's 29.99.

Well since it is by T-Mobile i'm sure it will be part of the same service they have in the US http://www.t-mobile.com/services/hotspot/overview. asp

So around $29.99 a month

Looking around the German site I don't see a monthly package. http://www.t-mobile.de/business/tarife/1,2279,3809 -_,00.html Hopefully that changes

Lol.

https://my.t-mobile.com/Login/?rc=*yawn*

That error was simply a java script bug in executying their little flyout tree for plan information which can be seen by removing the trailing apostrophe from the URL. See here: http://support.t-mobile.com/plan.html?treeName=pla ns&path Certainly poor error handling, but not much of an exploit.

That error was simply a java script bug in executying their little flyout tree for plan information which can be seen by removing the trailing apostrophe from the URL. See here: http://support.t-mobile.com/plan.html?treeName=pla ns&path Certainly poor error handling, but not much of an exploit.

Barnes and Noble stores that have Starbucks in them use T-Mobile's Hotspot as wifi provider.. once you subscribe to them you can use the service wherever Hotspot is available.

From TFWebsite, you can also use them in:
Starbucks coffeehouses,
Borders Books & Music stores,
FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Centers,
Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, airports, and the airline clubs of American®, Delta, United, and US Airways.

For US Locations click here

I personally dont use this service, why pay when I can go to Panera that's just around the corner..;)
Try the Turkey Artichoke sandwich!!!

It's 'kind of' done already...

See the HP iPaq h6315 (courtesy of T-Mobile)

You have your cellphone (with all those contacts imported from MS Outlook), PDA, and (granted not an iPod capacity) mp3 player through Windows Media Player. Includes an SD slot for memory, so you can add a few more mp3's (depending on your budget). Its a few steps from the good device you listed. Main concern is battery life. With all the functionality comes watts.. lots and lots of watts...

Maybe they should buy a device aimed at the youth market and priced to match? You get unlimited SMS, unlimited messaging (via AOL Instant Messenger), unlimited E-mail, plus a voice plan, starting at around $30/month. Anything else is just a rip-off.

Disclaimer: I work for a T-Mobile Indirect Dealer. I also sell Cingular. I hate Cingular and think they should die though.

I pay $10 a month for unlimited SMS and $5 a month for unlimited MMS (the MMS is a promo and goes down to 50 at the end of Jan so I'm dropping it down to $3 for 25) on T-Mobile. I also have unlimited WAP access for $5 a month (which used to work for unlimited GPRS until T-Mobile locked all of the ports down; I would pay for the $20 a month unrestricted GPRS option but my credit class won't let me) that works with Agile essenger so I get unlimited AIM/Jabber (MSN and Yahoo if I used those).

The $10 a month SMS promo is over technically but T-Mobile added it back for use with the Nokia 6800 only...but the activations and account management tools still show it as an option on any plan. Supposedly I get fired if I add to anyone not activating a Nokia 6800. If you want to add it to your plan, just use My T-Mobile, go to the account management stuff, change my options, and set your device as a Nokia 6800. Supposedly there is a chance of unlimited SMS being brought back as an option forever (note that once you add it you keep it forever, but it's not guaranteed to be offered to new customers forever) now that SprinTel is bigger than T-Mobile.

Well, there is one major problem with an open/free "smartphone": How do you go about getting your packets through the cell-phone system? The frequencies are owned by corporations like Verizon, and you can only communicate if you use their approved equipment.

The GSM operators in the US, like elsewhere, will happily take you on using any equipment of your chosing that's compatable with the network. If it's GSM1900 or GSM850, it'll work on any 1900MHz or 850MHz GSM network in the US as long as an appropriate SIM card is in the phone.

It's expensive to get a phone that's "unlocked" (doesn't refuse SIMs from operators other than the network that sold the phone), but it's not impossibly so.

Cingular and T-Mobile USA are currently the two largest GSM operators in the US. Cingular uses a mix of 850 and 1900MHz, T-Mobile just 1900MHz. They're both reasonably good with plans competitive with those of Verizons, but check out the experience of people you know on those networks in the areas you want to use them as coverage varies with any network.

* (Off-topic CDMA rant: This, incidentally, is a crying shame. Qualcomm's supporters initially claimed no mobile users actually wanted personal mobility, then argued it would be illegal to implement in the US, then finally, when Qualcomm implemented it as an optional extra, argued that it was perfectly reasonable to make it optional because those kinds of decisions should, for reasons unknown, be the choice of the network operator. Sure. Right. Whatever. CDMA is a really nice idea, it's a shame the major standard for it really, really, sucks, to an extent that the standard made the entire package worse than the competition. It's nice UMTS has adopted the technology itself (not the standard) and hopefully will put it out to people in a package that's actually user flexible rather than Qualcomm's bizarre systems.)

Samsung "B-Bop"
400 MHz Processor, 128 MB ROM, 64 MB RAM, Bluetooth, WiFi, GSM/GPRS, miniSD, 240x320 pixel with 18-bit Color, 5.52" x 2.01" x 0.95", 2 Mega Pixel Camera, and Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition for Phone Edition.

And I am speaking as an owner of the color sidekick - supposedly the newest iteration is significantly enhanced. The only downsides are that
1) the reception isn't 100% (though I hear the newest one is a lot better wrt this).
2) it breaks a lot (though they do have a generous exchange policy).

Anyway, if it's available in your area, I'd definitely consider it. There is no extra charge for any internet usage (about $60/month gives me the package I need) and the ssh app is probably less than $5 to buy. If it doesn't work for you, I hope somebody else benefits from my recommendation.

I don't know how relevant or useful it is, but Linksys (groan) [offers a HotSpot in a box] (more details [here]).. Since it seems so easy to set-up, you might want to immediately start running this at one of the locations, then do your other custom solution at another, and see which one works better. If you get a lot of customers used to going to many HotSpots, then this solution could work as it is with Boingo. You could go the T-Mobile route as well.

Disclaimer: I do not know anything else about HotSpots.

"Costs are often more than landlines."

That's because landlines are *really cheap* in the US. Qwest provides unlimited, reliable dialtone with unlimited local calls for about $13 around here.

If you actually take the time to compare how much people pay *per minute* on mobile phones in the US, it's actually less than it is in places like Germany or the UK. Compare T-Mobile Germany and T-Mobile USA, for example.

Here's a plan from T-Mobile Germany:

http://www.t-mobile.de/business/relax/1,6243,10532 -_,00.html

500 minutes (inclusive) for 86.21 per month - about $115. This is a "business" plan, but the "personal" plan is 100 per month.

Here's a plan from T-Mobile USA:

http://www.t-mobile.com/plans/NationalRatePlanDeta ils.asp?PlanID=3952

2500 minutes (inclusive) for $100 a month.

Compared to the Germany plan, the US plan:

- Is $15 cheaper
- Offers *five times* more inclusive minutes
- Does not charge for roaming throughout the US (the Germany plan charges for roaming outside of Germany)
- Offers free nighttime calling and free calling on weekends

Compared to the US plan, the Germany plan offers:

- Free incoming calls

"You pay to make AND receive calls."

Yes, but with my free nights/weekends and 2000 extra minutes, I'm not too concerned about being charged for incoming calls.

Oh, and by the way, do you realize why people don't pay to recieve calls on mobiles in Europe?

It's because the person calling pays a lot more than they do in the US. In the US, calling a mobile is just like calling a landline. If it's a local call, it's almost always free. If it's long-distance, it's covered by your long distance plan - often as little as $.05 a minute.

In Europe, calling a mobile phone on a different carrier than your own or calling a mobile phone from a landline can cost 0.25 a minute or more.

Oh, and what about data? T-Mobile USA offers unlimited GPRS for $20 a month (with any voice plan). If you subscribe to their WAP service ("T-Zones"), you can use that APN to get on the internet (albeit with a NAT IP address) for $5 a month. Try to find that in Europe.

Get your facts straight before you start claimin g that US mobile service is more expensive than it is in Europe.

"Competing technologies (CDMA, TDMA, GSM, iDEN)"

iDEN is only used by Nextel. TDMA is used by ATT/Cingular but it is currently being phased out (ATT/Cingular is GSM/GPRS/EDGE).

Really, there are only two serious wireless technologies in the US. GSM, used by T-Mobile and ATT/Cingular, and CDMA2000, used by Sprint PCS and Verizon Wireless.

"Competing technologies" are the reason that CDMA was given a chance. If the US had mandated GSM, it is unlikely that Qualcomm would have ever been able to develop CDMA. And, before you start badmouthing CDMA, consider this: UMTS, the successor to GSM, is based on Qualcomm's CDMA technology.