[vox] cell phone contracts

[Marc Elliot Hall]

On Sat, Nov 25, 2006 at 01:58:14PM -0500, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> My cellphone contract with Verizon is up, and I'm looking around for new
> cellphone deals.

"deals" don't exist in the cellphone space. All plans are overpriced
when compared with similar landline capabilities.  

Yet, I still have a cellphone. Two, actually. Three, if you count the one
my employer mandates (grumble grumble on-call grumble). 
 
> I'm currently paying $40 (300 min, free calling at 9) for truly bare bones
> basic service.  That's the cheapest plan, AFAIK, that Verizon has.  It
> sucks.

My wife and I use T-Mobile. We get 400 shared minutes, long distance
included, unlimited weekend minutes, and free phone-to-phone calling 
(i.e., we can call each other's phones for no additional charge) for 
the modest sum of $61.77, graft^H^H^H^H^H taxes and fees included. 

My wife's phone is the cheap Motorola model that T-Mobile offered at a
discount when I added her to my existing plan. I have a PalmOne Treo 600, 
based on PalmOS (which I understand is going to be retired soon *sob*). 

> Went to the Verizon store, and it appears that the very cheapest I can get
> voice and data for is $80 (I really want to be able to access google and
> wikipedia from my phone).
> 
> Just took a look at Sprint.  Their cheapest calling plan is $30 (200 min,
> free calling at 7) and an astonishing $15 for "unlimited web and data".
> 
> By the looks of it, Verizon's pricing is just absolutely awful.
> 
> I was wondering if anyone knew of any other cellphone carriers I might want
> to look at that may be competitive with Sprint or of any contract deals
> they've heard of that might be interesting.
>
> I've never had web/data access on a cellphone before.  Is it possible to
> upload some kind of ssh client onto a phone?

There are a number of ssh clients out there for PalmOS devices. I can
only presume similar options exist for other devices. However, the
existence of those clients for PalmOS was one of my primary motiviations
for choosing the Treo over other, significantly less expensive, phones. 
 
I had a data plan for about eighteen months when I first got my Treo. 
That was another $20. There was a cap on MB downloaded after which
T-Mobile would charge by the byte; but I can't remember what that cap
was. I never actually hit it, even with the occasional Web surfing and
daily use of pssh (ssh 1 only at the time; don't know what it supports 
now) to connect to my mailserver and read my mail (I love mutt!) as 
well as execute the occasional server admin task. I only discontinued
the data plan because I couldn't get a reliable connection at my
workplace, and having that capability at other times wasn't nearly as
valuable to me.

The Treo syncs well with my Debian Testing desktop system, too. 

Finally, based on the abuse I dish out to this device, at three years 
old it is doing remarkably well. 
 
> Thanks!
> Peter
> 
-- 
Marc Elliot Hall
www.hallmarc.net