My wife has suggested that we get a family plan for a cell phone. We have resisted this convenience since the inception of the cell phone but it is now time for us to buy.

I am involved with AA,AW,AL,BA,DL,NW,CC,UAL,and US for airlines. I also am in Hilton, Starwood, BW, and Radison for hotel programs.

Any suggestions will be appreciated and welcomed!

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GEAUX Tigers

AT&T is doing a special. If you do a search in the DL forum you'll find some info.

If you plan to do much calling in shreveport, louisiana, usa, you might want to find out who is the A carrier or the B carrier(the two dominants), unless points are more important than signal. Check in the places you will try to use the phone, & find out who has signal

A lot does depend on where you will be traveling, as some plans work better in some areas than others. Nextel is the only one that I have found that can be used in parts of Canada. I'm waiting for my bill, but it's suppose to be free "a local call is a local call" and calling back to the states is 20 cents. Other plans are about $1 a minute. On the other hand you need to be in the vicinity of highways, or it might not work. I was in Taos and my nextel didin't work, but my friends cingular one did. You really have to be thorough in your questions of each cell phone plan and not worry about miles. I was able to get 5K miles on Delta (or United) in response to an offer for Nextel. Also, they do not charge for unanswered calls and charge when the call is answered. Most other plans charge an unanswered call after 30 seconds. If I were you, I'd go to each cell company in your location and ask alot of questions. When you find the plan that fits your needs, then come back and see if there are any mileage offers for that company.

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Ms.DtG

Don't sacrifice carrier for a few miles. I have had sprint, at&t and Verizon. Verizon is far better than anyone else in my opinion. I always have better signal and call quality than anyone else. In general most sprint customers I know hate sprint. At&t users are satisfied and verizon users are happy. Only hear negative about t-mobile and don't know much about cingular.

Yes, Verizon has been excellent. The rest are not so good. You might get lucky and AT&T is good in your area but in general none of the others are very good. The only one I might consider getting is Nextel which has some mileage programs with various airlines...if you like their walkie talkie feature.

My cingular (PacBell at the time) worked in Toronto, but not Taos.
We have a family plan with four phones, and originally my parents phones worked fine from their house, and poorly from ours. Suddenly one day we had full power! Great news except parent's phones don't work from their home anymore. Service is really spotty around here if you are in a residential neighborhood.



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lili,
shopping her way to first class

You may want to give T-Mobile a shot. I have Cingular (which is GSM in CA, NV, WA and ID), so they partner with T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream) in other parts of the country. I have to say that I have never had a problem when in a T-Mobile network. Best of all, since you will have GSM service, it will work anywhere in Canada (using either the Microcell or Rogers AT & T networks) as well as in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. T-Mobile also has the lowest international roaming rates. If you looking for miles however, AT & T has a deal with AA to get 5,000 miles for each line.

lilli - how much did you plan cost you in Canada. It's not just does it work - but how much it cost. Eastern Canada including Toronto it's suppose to not cost anything extra. My bill came in today, but all calls while we were in Canada were no included in the bill (???). Perhaps because it uses another network, there is a delay and our billing cycle closed the day we left - 11/17.
Your best bet is to ask people in your home town how they like their service - what they have, what kind of reception they get, where else in the country they've use it, etc. What they like and what they don't like about their service. Then - when you decide based on service, ask if anyone has got miles.

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Ms.DtG

Go for the one with the best coverage in the area(s) where you will be.

There is no 100% good cell provider. Each and every provider has pockets of no coverage. Some have stronger coverage in some areas and weaker in others. Some are dominant in certain regions. Some have capacity issues in certain areas where calls can't get through. What one person says here about a cell provider may be true in his/her experience but may not hold true for you.

Best thing to do is ask people in your local area with travel patterns similar to yourself and find out how satisfied they are.

Bottom line: if there were indeed a cell provider whose network were flawless -- no dropped calls, no coverage dead zones, no network busy messages, no problems anywhere -- they'd charge $100/month for a base plan for their service, and tons people would pay it because they're superior. Unfortunately, no such provider exists.

Cingular is running a roll-over program now which is very intriguing. Here in California you get 500 peak minutes with roaming for $39.99 per month (and unlimited off-peak). Any peak minutes that you do not use get rolled over for a maximum of 12 months. This could save you a lot of money even if you occassionally go over your allocation.

I was actually in the same boat, where I chose the phone carrier based on miles.

I went with t-mobile because:

a. Low nationwide rates

b. Decent coverage

c. Roaming in Europe for $.99

d. PocketPC Phone.

The last one is awesome. If you are a palmtop user, and are thinking about upgrading, kill two birds with one stone and get the pocketpc phone.

No, I don't work for them


p.s. I am still waiting for the miles (5K) to post to my OP account, after 3 months.

Try Sprint.

I've had the best luck with AT&T in terms of coverage - however that's in Los Angeles. T-Mobile/VoiceStream was pretty good in Pensacola, FL, which is near to your hometown.

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- Sameer

"Didn't we just leave this party?"
www.liningup.net

Does T-Mobil offer any miles or points?