If you dont have the money for the plans with cricket it SUCKS!! the tech support is trash. Verizon has a better calling area than cricket is. Cricket messes with your bank account and the machines tax you like 15% of what you are putting in with.

IF YOU PAY FOR 3 MONTHS YOU GET THE 4TH ONE FREE.

for low volume users (less than 250-300 minutes a month), i think t-mobile prepaid is the best value out there. Both my wife and i use it. A 1000 minute card, good for 12 months plus rollover for another full year if you buy ANY other card. We use each about 700 minutes a year and over a 3 year period we each spend less than $250 each/$500 total for 3 years of service. That is less than $15 a month total for 2 lines. Nationwide use, no roaming and relatively inexpensive in canada and mexico, especially for texting. And as a plus because their phones are gsm, if you travel outside of the u.s., canada and mexico you can swap out the sims for local ones. I buy the 1000 minute prepaid cards from callingmart for about $92 with no sales tax and instant email back of the activation code. My only advise is to not buy a new phone from ebay. most of them sold are from foreign markets or have other operational problems probably due to counterfeiting. There are alot of used razr phones in like-new condition available from people who dumped their plans. These phones are almost always originally bought from tmobile and are the real deal. In most cases (with a small amount of hassle), tmobile will give you the activation code to unlock the phone so you can use any sim chip in them in case you travel abroad and want to use the phone on another network.
The other bit of advise i would give when traveling abroad is to buy a pda, like a dell axim with wifi. You can easily pick up an axim, the x50 or x51 with built in wifi for $100 or so on craigslist or ebay. with the many hotels and public areas in both the u.s. and foreign countries having wifi access, mostly free these pda's seamlessly connect to the internet and allow you to send and receive email and get internet access. We always stay in communication in foreign countries by email only and it works very well and best of all, absolutely free without the hassles of buying foreign sim chips for cell phones or calling cards for landline phones.

I must be missing something, I pay $40/month for at&t (400 min w/rollover/nights and weekends) and $20/month for internet, email etc. My Co discount brings that down to $37/month. How will I save $1000?.

Even though Metro Pcs won't convert your phones with Sim cards, you can still win with their service. I found that you can buy a prepaid phone (I bought the Verizon phone)from Target or Walmart for only $29, take it to any MetroPCS store and they will activate it for around $30. This way you don't have to buy the phones from MetroPCS which starts at $99 and up.

This is for Mike in Milwaukee & Karen in Virginia. My wife is now with Net10 it's great. The coverage is the same as AT&T!! LG600G with Sim card & Bluetooth!! net10.com Goodluck!!

Out here in the sticks we get AT&T and the local CDMA competitor (Cellular South instead of Verizon). Oh and Unicel, who uses AT&T's network in the immediate area, so the coverage is the same.

Cricket and Metro are at least 100 miles from me - lotta good *that* does!

What about signal coverage?! I tried T-mobile for a week before switching to cingular/AT&T. My co-workers had at&t and good signal where i had to walk outside to get even a little signal. This is in Metro Atlanta! a popular market. What's the real trade off? nothing's free!

cricket is in Milwaukee seen it advertised

They just started advertising here last week. Stores are popping up everywhere in Milwaukee...I've seen at least 5 new Cricket stores on the north side in the last week.

I guess Milwaukee isn't a big enough market. Niether offers service here

If you just want a phone and don't talk much this is a good option. I pay $80.00 per year.

Funny that clark doesn't mention consumer cellular. If anybody wants to lower their cell bill and just wants a phone without all the extras they are GREAT. Tell em Jim sent ya

I'm a "happy" Cricket customer, and just had another look at their website discovering that they now offer "Cricket Broadband Internet" service for $40 a month. It looks as if it'll work in my area (Portland)...has anyone tried this service? Reliable? Fast? Worth the money ?

I have verizon the cheapest plan possible for me and my husband it is 80.00 a month. I am wondering if the 45.00 for metro is a family plan if so it is a good deal if not then I am paying less which I think is too munch.

I had Metro for a few years and enjoyed unlimited minutes, but the service is bad. My calls would repeatedly drop in "good service" areas. Customer service is VERY poor. I had several different phones all with the same bad service. If you are willing to give up good service for unlimited calling Metro is for you. I switched from Metro to Verizon June 08 and enjoy good phone service and call quality.

I just read your comment about the Cricket & Metro cell phones. I have a Virgin Mobile cell and I pay less than $39. per mo. I get 300 daytime minutes and 1000 unlimited week-ends and after 7pm. I am very happy with that. Tho't you'd like to hear?

I was disappointed that it is not available in my state of Virginia.

I have T-Mobile at $29.99/total$36.02 per month. 300 min.p/mth;unlimited wkends;Nationwide plan.
MetroPC does not sound like a good deal to me.
Thanks!!

What you don't get with Cricket/Metro is unlimited roaming. In fact you get no roaming with the $45/month program, contrary to what Clark led us to believe. MetroPCS does provide free text messaging while roaming however, that is a bonus.