Nearly everyone reading this has or wants a cellular/mobile phone. Maybe you have one and are considering trying another service. I've been with a few, and am having an AWFUL time with one in particular right now, and I figured I'd use this space to share my information.
Where are you using it?
The first question when choosing a mobile system is where do you intend to use it? Some carriers have great service in major metropolitan areas around the country; some really just focus on one state or one region. Still others offer coast to coast coverage using analog or a combination of analog and digital. If you do a lot of traveling, you will probably want one that has coverage in lots of areas - the question then is: do you want the digital-only metropolitan area-only coverage, or do you want a phone that will pick whatever gives you the best service from where you are standing and completes the call? The latter will probably cost more, especially since analog roaming tends to be more expensive than using the digital system. However, it does allow for service if your car is stuck between major city A and major city B. I tend to go for this option knowing that if I needed the coverage, it is there at a cost, and otherwise, I'm just digital.
This also means buying the right phone not only for the carrier you want but for the systems you want it to work on. If you want to use digital and analog systems, then you want to make sure your phone works on both. Also remember a phone that worked on one company's system may not work on another, so it's not all translatable.
Deb's Horror Story
I had an old Nokia 2160 laying around from formerly using AT&T for mobile service. I don't like them, and was shopping for a new carrier who'd let me use this phone. I chose MCI Wireless, who promised I could use that model and helped me program it over the phone. They signed me up for an account that allowed for digital and analog, just like I was using on AT&T. However, a few months later, I noticed that the phone wasn't using digital systems in places where it should have been. After doing some research and connecting with a very nice MCI Wireless customer rep, I realised that the 2160's digitalness (?) does not work on MCI's mobile system as they use a different protocol than AT&T. So this was major fraud, if you ask me, since if they hadn't lied I probably would have signed up with someone else, maybe even AT&T again - who knows - who would have allowed the dual-band use of the phone I already owned.
