[MarianneJ]

I was just released from prison, er... I mean my 2 year contract with Sprint and did alot of looking around. I ended up buying 4 different phones to find one with reception in my house. Unless you live in a big city the coverage maps on the provider websites are just not accurate.

I finally ended up with Cingular Pay-as-you-Go. During the summer months I do not use my phone everyday so I am on the plan which is $1/day if you use the phone and $0.10/minute thereafter. Once I start back to school at the end of August I will change to either the straight $0.25/minute or they also offer a third alternative in the PrePaid category: 200 minutes for $30/month auto-withdrawal from bank account/CC/DebitCard. This is the one I am leaning toward.

My other findings:
* Verizon's PrePaid are astronomically expensive.

* Tracfone only uses a small percentage of towers - i.e. in my area they contract with T-Mobile for all GSM phones but you will not necessarily get the full coverage that a person who has a contract with T-Mobile gets.

* Same for Virgin Mobile who uses Sprint towers

* You can save yourself some money on your PrePaid phone by calling to listen to your voicemail messages from another phone such as your landline - you will not be charged for those minutes unlike if you listen directly from your cell phone.