bob_nestor wrote:
The main problem with pre-paid vs post-paid phones is that most of the services don't roam onto other vendors towers on pre-paid where they do on post-paid plans. And if you look at their coverage maps it's difficult to tell where you'll need roaming to have connectivity. No doubt this is part of their marketing plans - better overall services on their post-paid plans and the ability to offer lower costs on their pre-paid plans.
The one exception to this that I've found is T-Mobile; they do roam on their pre-paid plans for the most part and their coverage is pretty good in the West. Not sure, but their roaming on pre-paid may be dependent on which partners they have roaming agreements with though. I know that's the case in Alaska and Western Canada.
I was a bit surprised to find that my pre=paid AT&T phone did roam in Western Canada, although it roamed on Rogers as I recall and T-Mobile roamed on Telus.
I really didn't look to much into T-Mobile. I meet most of their bands so I could probably hook up with them. Their coverage map is pretty small but you are right they do roam in the US unlike other prepaid plans. However it looks like their roaming is restricted to 200MB. We use about 16GB a month. So if we get into a area that is all roaming we'll be hooped. But having said that we do spend most of our winter in Quartzsite.
