Steve Sobol wrote:

> Ha. Verizon won't do anything like that, since they have never felt the need to
> compete on price.

Sure they do. They don't try to set the lowest price, but they can't
charge more either.

Look at "http://www.mobileburn.com/plans.jsp" and do some comparisons.

$40 buys you 500 minutes on Alltel, 450 minutes on AT&T, Sprint, and
Verizon (all with free MTM), and 600 minutes on T-Mobile (with no MTM).

$60 buys you 900 minutes on Alltel, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon (all with
free MTM), and 1500 minutes on T-Mobile (with no MTM).

$80 buys you 1400 minutes on Alltel, 1350 minutes on AT&T, Sprint, and
Verizon (all with free MTM), (T-Mobile has no plan at that price point).

Only T-Mobile advertises a $30/month plan (though other carriers do have
them apparently).

Actually Verizon ends up being less than AT&T and Sprint (not sure about
Alltel) because their junk fees are much lower). They're probably being
stupid in this approach because they don't advertise the lower junk
fees. Few people check the junk fees when comparing prices. OTOH, you
don't get stuff like rollover on Verizon.

It goes beyond the price too. Look at free MTM. Verizon has, by far, the
largest number of retail customers (customers that you can call with
free MTM). While AT&T has more users of their network, giving them
bragging rights of "largest carrier"), they have a lot of MVNO customers
included, who don't qualify as in network (not sure if AT&T's own
prepaid customers can be called as in-network by a post paid AT&T customer).

If you're buying by price, and know about SERO, Sprint is the best deal,
as long as you buy a handset that you can force to roam on Verizon.