best cell svc. for DMU students?

[texaskid]

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help...please. i live in texas and will be moving up to des moines in a couple of weeks. i have no idea what cellular provider will work best. i'll be living at the imperial on the third floor, and i want to be able to talk inside my apartment as well as inside the buildings on campus. i also need a company that provides a national coverage family plan since i'll be outta state and my parents are going to foot the bill. yay for that, right?

so anyways, does such a thing exist? what do most of you have? and how well does it work for you? gsm or digital? any particular model of phone that works better than others? my research has been a headache so far. 😱 i'm desperate for any advice you can give...thanx 🙂

 

[luckystar]

Hi...I live in the imperial, and Verizon gives me good service. Like you, I'm keeping my local number from home, but since I have the national plan, it doesn't matter where I go or who I call. If your parents are going to be using their home phone to call your cell phone, you might think about keeping a local number so that they won't have to pay long-distance charges when they call you. A few spots on campus will give you poor reception no matter what service you have. Also since a lot of people have Verizon, when you call them, those minutes will be considered mobile-to-mobile, which is like, an extra 1000 minutes depending on your plan.

Other people I know have US Cellular, Sprint, and I really haven't seen many people with AT&T or Cingular. Maybe it's just a regional thing.

As for phone models, I've had Motorolas for 9 years. To me, they're easy to use and since I'm familiar with the format of things, I'm not that inclined to go with a different company. They've also been around a long time and each phone I've had has been pretty tough even when dropped multiple times. I know that dmak has a Samsung, which he likes, also Verizon, and cremaster has a new Audiovox with the camera, with US Cellular. I'm sure you've been to all the websites of the major carriers, so I guess you can pretty much decide on what model of phone you like, and then see which company carries it. They don't all have the same phones.

 

[texaskid]

thanx for the reply. i had verizon for three years, but i switched to at&t because it was cheaper. looks like you get what you pay for on this one.

thanks again. 😀

 

[luckystar]

You know, I am tempted to change to AT&T myself! Just because they carry this very, very cool Siemens phone. And now that you can keep your number when you switch carriers, it's a lot easier to sample which service is best. After you fulfill that one-year contract, that is...But I'm happy with Verizon, and they never have given me billing problems, so I feel like I should stick to what I know.

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

 

[jennyw17]

I have AT&T's gsm service and it has good coverage in Des Moines. A few of my friends have it and they really like it also. They have deals now where you can add another line for only $10, so if you're interested in having a family plan it's pretty cheap. I kept my cell phone number when I moved to Iowa and that's no problem with a national plan. Plus AT&T just increased their coverage so now you never get charged for roaming if your phone shows another carrier, so that's nice...not that I do a lot of traveling lately. 🙂 The only think is, like luckystar said, that a lot of people have sprint or verizon so you can really take advantage of the mobile to mobile minutes, which you can also get with AT&T (But they don't really help if you don't know people on AT&T). Good luck on your search for a cell phone plan. I would just recommend getting plan that have a trial period that way if your coverage isn't what you want you can cancel within that time frame without a charge.