EDGE in the seat of my pants
So I was poking around all of the data plans between Cingular, Verizon and T-Mobile today. Mostly because work was light, my realization that there are actually practical WAP sites out there and prices for data usage have fallen a considerable amount since I last checked.
It would be substantially easier to just stick with Cingular. I'm out of contract, if I want a phone that has faster data throughput than a fat kid in gym class - GPRS for short - I can always buy some unlocked phone and drop my SIM into that, and for $20 I can get unlimited data and 200 text and multimedia messages. T-Mobile will do unlimited web access for $5, but Cingular's coverage is better enough that it makes me a little leery of switching, plus their network is faster. (Although for most phone browsing, you don't exactly need broadband speeds.)
I guess the question is: Is being able to check email, movie times (and order tickets), Google and occasionally the weather and news worth $20? The first 2.5 are quasi-practical, news and weather are just a toy, along with all of the video clips they keep advertising.
It would be substantially easier to just stick with Cingular. I'm out of contract, if I want a phone that has faster data throughput than a fat kid in gym class - GPRS for short - I can always buy some unlocked phone and drop my SIM into that, and for $20 I can get unlimited data and 200 text and multimedia messages. T-Mobile will do unlimited web access for $5, but Cingular's coverage is better enough that it makes me a little leery of switching, plus their network is faster. (Although for most phone browsing, you don't exactly need broadband speeds.)
I guess the question is: Is being able to check email, movie times (and order tickets), Google and occasionally the weather and news worth $20? The first 2.5 are quasi-practical, news and weather are just a toy, along with all of the video clips they keep advertising.