Hi Cigarman,

You are correct that Cingular is slowly killing you. The Nokia 6160 is a dual TDMA/Analogue phone from the old ATT era. It will not work on the current Cingular GSM800 network, and Cingular is slowly dismantling the old ATT network.

You have several options;

1) Get a Cingular GSM phone and accept their plan (GSM). You are correct that it will NOT work everywhere. It will be fine in Vegas, or pretty much all other major cities in the US; but it will NOT work in rural areas or "middle of nowhere" roads. If you mainly travel to populated areas and are not stuck in a car in the middle of nowhere it should work just fine.

2) Your best option IMHO would be Verizon. They have the best coverage in the country. You can "port" the number from Cingular to Verizon. Sadly I have little to no experience with Verizon but I constantly hear good things about them.

T-mobile is not an option for you really; their US coverage is still pretty poor so unless you are mainly in areas they have coverage they won't help much.

As for cheaper T-mobile calls abroad; your only option really is to get prepaid SIM cards in each country and have your clients call you on that number, as you said; that isn't much of an option.