Since I've already done research on cell phone providers, might as well save you trouble. The national cell phone providers are:

National Cell Providers
• Verizon
• Cellular ONE
• Sprint PCS
• AT&T
• Cingular Wireless

There are regional providers too, but I can't see the advantages that they have The Telco industry is one where you have to be one hell of a huge company so I don't trust any of these small players, the mega companies have a hard enough time maintaining an attractive service. However this is the whole beauty of the States though, intense competition that gives the consumer a lot of choices. Though there is one drawback, because of this competition the providers don't want you to easily change service. So the cell phones don't let you change the GSM chip, and most of the time are made specifically for that provider and won't work with anyone else. What you should take from this is to not ever spend a ton of money on a cell phone.

Ammendment: All the regional guys have been swallowed up anyways. The game now is all about having nationwide presence. So now there are nothing but alliances such as Verizon and Cingular.

You should be warned because of credit, some will ask for a $200 deposit unless you can argue with a manager. Another warning is that the Telco situation in the United States is a joke compared to Canada (one of the few things that Canada dominates at), and you'll notice that the second you come into an American airport and see how archaic the coin operated telephones are. Though there is a valid explanation for this, and that is their telephone network is 100X larger than Canada's so it takes much more resources (time and money) to upgrade it.

The San Jose Mercury News reported a survey that polled users of various services how they felt about their service. Almost everyone did poorly, except for Pacific Bell Wireless (now Cingular). I started off with Cingular/PacBell because they had the best deal at the time and were the most popular. But in the bay area there's one thing you have to accept: everyone sucks. It's all dependent on where you work and live, you need to ask people that live similar to you about their service. After I got my wife an AT&T phone I ended up cancelling my PacBell/Cingular service after seeing how awesome the signal strength usually was.

PacBell/Cingular seems to work well in San Francisco. In the East Bay of the California Bay Area you will experience a lot of black spots. Especially out in Livermore.

Sprint PCS does well in San Diego, the South Bay Area. Sprint PCS has a very attractive offer, free long distance and all that. Take a look at their coverage though, unless you're near a highway you'll be out of service. They have huge blocks of no coverage in the bay area, especially out in the east bay (where a lot of my friends are).

GTE Wireless (now Verizon) is the worst! Signal strength is horrible, clarity is bad, the phone can barely maintain a connection to the node. If you get Verizon in the bay area you can expect to be talking like you have a walkie-talkie, that is synchronous brief bursts of short phrases.

AT&T Wireless is excellent for the East Bay and Central Valley (Sacramento and Central California). However AT&T doesn't do well in San Diego. They've come a long way though, when I moved here it wasn't even worth considering them.

CellularOne and AirTouch are unimpressive. Take a look at their web sites, hardly any information about plans and prices. Very poor service to potential clients who browse the web, and to me that's a reflection of the kind of service you can expect overall.

Articles To Read
• Mercury News searches for best service

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