[Touch Pro2 CDMA] djstern:
This is a long post so if you don't want to read the whole thing then just skip to the last three paragraphs for the jest of it all. I think you'll find a little surprise there. :)

On the subsidy issue, don't believe for a minute that it cost's the carries for subsidize your phones. Nothing could be further from the truth. I'm a cross country truck driver and not long ago I hauled a full truck load of phone for Verizon. Due to insurance requirements they had to list the value of the phones on the bills of laden. Not the retail price that they make you pay, but the ACTUAL price that Verizon paid for the phones. Depending on the phone model Verizon was charging between 4-8 times what the phone actually cost them. More than that for a couple of the high end phones. I'm referring to the so called discount price, not the "full" price. I wondered about if those numbers were correct so I talked with my companies vice president about it. She looked up the insurance the company had to pay for that phone load and verified that the numbers were indeed accurate. BTW we have to pay a additional premium on any load that is valued over 1/2 million dollars. That's why this came up in the first place.

Bottom line is that the carriers all make a 400-800 percent markup on the phones. More for the high end phones. No matter how you slice it a 400% to 800% or more markup is nothing short of criminal. They are making a killing on those phones! Don't let any one tell you otherwise. Admittedly, a few of the entry level phones didn't have that kind of margin, but they were the exception.

Now, onto the topic of the thread. I was with ATT (the first ATT) around 15 years ago back when they first began offering the nation wide one rate. They were the only carried at that time that had such an offer at the time. As a cross country truck driver this was a requirement. They were CDMA at the time. The coverage back then ROCKED! I could literally go anywhere in the country and find a signal. Often roaming in rural areas, but I had a signal and it didn't cost me any extra. Sprint BTW was the last major carrier to offer nation wide roaming.

Things were good till Cingular took over. Then all hell broke loose. They changed so many policies that angered so many customers. I would have left then, but Verizon, a conglomeration of smaller carriers banded together to form Verizon was new and had the most horrid customer service in the industry at the time. They also couldn't get their roaming straight and regularly charged for roaming that they shouldn't have charged for. Sprint still didn't have nationwide roaming so I was stuck with Cingular, like it or not, and I can assure you I didn't like it at all.

Then, Cingular switched to GSM, and shoved it down customers throats. I dreaded the change at the time. Coverage on GSM back then was spotty at best, and I routinely found my self without coverage, often for literally hundreds of miles at a time. I held onto my old phone for as long as I could, but unfortunately, by the time my old CDMA phone died Cingular didn't have a "gate" phone any more. Sprint still didn't have nation wide roaming, and Verizon still didn't have their customer service problems fixed, though their billing issues had improved some what. The regional carriers were not an option for me for obvious reasons.

Throughout the years data has been more than a little bit of a problem. I'd drag the laptop inside the truck to connect through AOL, a few other providers with supposedly nationwide access, Park-N-View (truck drivers know what I'm talking about there) and a few other extreme measures in an vain attempt to download something as little as my email all to no avail.

Finally, Nextel came out with a data modem that I thought was a gift from heaven. Straight from hell was more like it. Coverage was a figment of my imagination, and speed, well, I can tell you that I've seen dead grass grow faster than that. Never mind the fact that the modem broke in less than two months and they refused to fix it. Mind you, that was before Sprint bought them.

The real gift came with Sprint finally came out with their data modems. Slightly faster than dial up, but it was reliable and I could connect from most parts of the country with no problem. Heck, my wife could surf the internet while I drove the truck down the highway at 70 MPH! We were in data heaven. Granted, it was only slightly faster than dial up, but that's what I had at home anyhow, and it was faster than our dial up. Unfortunately, Sprint, and the other carriers for that matter still didn't have a reasonable voice data plan so I was still stuck with ATT despite my growing hatred for them. No one was offering anything better at the time. Verizon still had sucky customer service and Sprint still didn't have nationwide roaming. T-Mobile was still mostly east coast.

My hatred for ATT grew even further when I discovered that their so called edge service was actually the real internet with filtering applied. They would block html, php, and other web pages and only allow you to access wap pages. With a little hacking I discovered that I could get to the real internet on my phone at the media net price. I refused to pay that much for a connection that was that slow!

FINALLY!!!!! Sprint came out with a voice/data plan what was worth looking at, (the $99.00 everything plan) but alas, it was only for a single line. I needed a 4 line family plan. I found my self still stuck where I was, no data on my phone, though thankfully I had it on my computer in the truck thanks to sprint. They had also came out with roaming in recent years.

Sprint couldn't have come out with a

family

voice/data plan at a worse time for me financially. I was so excited to finally see it and fell in love with the Mogul. Unfortunately money wouldn't allow it at the time and I was still stuck under contract with ATT. So there I sat, fuming, my hatred growing for ATT every passing day. What they charged for the so called media net and limited texting X 4 phones was ridiculous so I had no choice but to turn all of that stuff off. It would cost me more for media net and limited texting on each phone than unlimited every thing would cost on Sprint! I couldn't see spending more to get less! Every time I couldn't even text a friend because of their high cost just added to the fire never mind the filtering on their media net.

A while back I got a settlement check and was finally able to get the phones. Needles to say, after all those years of dreaming of data in the palm of my hand I opted for the Touch Pro2. Not just one, but four of them. My wife and parents all insisted that I get them regular phones, but I just couldn't see paying for data and not getting phones that could use it.

Well, every time I look at my family sitting in the living room watching TV my mother and father are on the phone playing games or texting, my wife actually surfs the internet more on the phone than she does on the computer, (says she likes being able to "take it with her") and I'm always doing some little thing on it. I've used a Dell Axim X 50v for years, but the data totally changes the whole PDA experience.

I've installed both Co-Pilot and Garmin on the phone so I'm not dependent on the data for mapping, and the GPS rocks. My wife and I are into Geocaching, have been for years, and I find the GPS to be as accurate as any Garmin that I've used. GCZII (it's a geocaching program) makes using the phone for geocaching a dream. Add the variety of other applications that I've used on my Dell, and I've finally got the system that I've dreamed about for years.

First of all, ATT doesn't even have some of the stuff that Sprint does, but if I were to put together an ATT plan with all the features and service as close as possible to what ATT offers (GPS, mapping, tv, etc) it would cost me nearly $80.00 a month more (as of a few months ago when I last looked).

To top it all off, ATT blocks some sites like Pandora and others on Winmo phones. To give you an idea what that's all about, Pandora is a free internet radio service that also offers a premium service. ATT blocks access to the site requiring you to pay an extra $8.99 a month ($107.88 a year) for the premium service. You don't have the option of using the free service. They block it. Pandora's premium service actually costs $3.00 a month ($36.00 a year). The other $5.99 a month ($71.88 a year) is ATT's charge for removing a block they placed in your internet service to begin with. It's nickle and dime bulls*&t dung like that that drove me to hate ATT!

Am I happy with Sprint since I changed over to them? Without a doubt the answer is a definite YES! Have they lived up to my excitations? Kinda hard to beat a 4 line family plan with 3000 minutes and un-limited everything else with free mobile to mobile REGARDLESS OF CARRIER that I can actually afford! What about customer service you may ask? Never has been a problem since I almost always know more about my phone then even their level two support does and have had little reason to even call them.

Bottom line, I get more minutes, unlimited everything and free mobile to mobile for only a little more than I paid ATT for voice only. It was a no brainier.