10/16   Best deal on a cell phone? I want a free phone and no charges for
        incoming calls. Don't care about nationwide, roaming, etc.
        \_ all cell plans charge you based on the minute.  Incoming/outgoing
           it doesn't matter.
           \_ In the US this is true. It is different overseas.
              \_ thank you mr pedantic.  Go away.
              \_ actually I think you can get free incoming calls with some
                 plan(s). I heard an ad for this on the radio. Dunno if it's
                 worth it.
        \_ everyone agrees: Cingular sucks. so what's a good alternative in
           terms of coverage? who's happy with their cell phone plan and
           wants to tell us about it?
           \_ Verizon works pretty well, but is pricey. -ausman
           \_ AT&T is good.  Plans are reasonable now.  Verizon is pricey
              but offer as good a coverage as AT&T.  The voice quality is
              better.
           \_ I don't know about coverage area, but Verizon seems to provide
              stronger signal in covered areas.  I didn't know that until my
              wife switched from Verizon to AT&T.  She used to get good
              connection with her Verizon phone in basements of buildings in
              SF as well as in BART trains, but now she can't do that with her
              AT&T phone.  --- yuen
           \_ What's wrong with Sprint? No one ever seems to mention them.
              \_ Cheap but below average quality/coverage.
              \_ Cheap but below average quality/coverage.  Good customer
                 service.  I work on some of their equipment, so blame me
                 if you get a disconnected call or no service.
                 \_ Quality of Sprint varies widely by location.  I have
                    friends and relatives in various east-coast states who
                    have Sprint and don't have any problems.  In the Bay Area,
                    Sprint sucks-- hard.  Everyone I know with a Sprint phone
                    bitches constantly. -dans
                    \_ Sprint PCS has a multi-vendor approach for building
                       its network.  That may be part of the reason for the
                       variation in quality and coverage.
         \_ You want free incoming calls?  Bwahhahahahahahahahahaha.  Welcome
            to the United States, land of the grossly inferior competing cell
            phone standards. -dans
            \_ I don't see how whether there are competing cell phone
               standards is related to whether incoming calls are charged.
               \_ The fact that incoming calls are universally charged in the
                  US is directly related to the fact that all the US cell
                  phone standards are grossly inferior to GSM (the cell phone
                  standard that the rest of the civilized world uses).  This
                  is because virtually all of the US standards in use today
                  were developed in the early 80's and simply can't handle the
                  capacity that GSM can.  The fact that we're still using
                  circa 1980 cell phone technologies is directly related to
                  the U.S. government's refusal to interfere with the
                  so-called "free market" that exists in the cellular space by
                  (gasp in horror) forcing the telcos to standardize!  The
                  market isn't really free since every carrier needs to build
                  out it's own infrastructure, and this is prohibitively
                  expensive.  So we have the situation that exists today: five
                  or six telcos carve up the profits, and all the customers
                  get inferior service from circa 1980 capacity networks.  How
                  1337. -dans
                  \_ US cell phone networks and technology are not inferior
                     to GSM at all, just built up along a different technical
                     and business model.  But paying for incoming calls is
                     pretty suck.  -John
                     \_ You're paying for airtime - incoming outcoming is
                        irrelevent.  What would suck is paying extra to call
                        someone because they have a cellular phone.
                  \_ Nah.  China uses GSM almost exclusively (China Unicom
                     is just starting to build a CDMA network) but incoming
                     calls are still being charged.  Also, how is CDMA
                     inferior to GSM?  By all accounts CDMA is superior to
                     GSM technology-wise, which is the reason why all 3G
                \_ I can understand why people hate being charged for
                   incoming calls, but I personally find it ok.  Whether
                   incoming or outgoing, the call is going to occupy
                   bandwidth, so there is a cost to the service provider.
                   Also, from user's perspective, being reachable anywhere
                   is a mostly positively thing, and hence an added value.
                   If incoming calls are not charged, it likely would just
                   mean that they would charge more for outgoing calls.
                   This would be unfair for people who make a lot of
                   outgoing calls and receive few incoming calls.  Charges
                   should be attributed to where cost is incurred and
                   where value is added.
                     standards are CDMA-based.  GSM is only more prevalent
                     in the 2G space for the same reason windows is the
                     most common OS around.