I need information and opinions...

[cabbitzilla]

It's rapidly getting to the point where I simply -must- have a cell phone. Between my less than splendid health and the amount of time I spend in transit (an amount that's going to increase, I believe), some sort of contact needs to be available. As those who know me can attest, I absolutely -loathe- telephones, so it's not something that would see excessive use.

Now before you start pitching your favorite plan and/or phone, there's a catch: it HAS to be a pay-as-you-go service. There are credit issues, and I don't have the $1000 deposit everyone seems to demand.

So... who knows anything about the pay-to-play outfits and the phones that're usable with them? Sound off, please.

Comments

[elix.livejournal.com]

I don't think we've sold any single-band handsets for a couple years--everything's at least 850/1900. (850's used by a few smaller carriers.) Many are triband or quadband.

T-Mobile USA doesn't use UMTS yet. (A report buried in press releases and investor relations from spring 2006 states that T-Mobile IS building a UMTS network and has a big mess of UMTS towers deployed in NYC. They're not public, yet. Several handsets on the market are GSM1900/UMTS1700(?), but that hasn't been officially acknowledged yet.)

[wibbble]

Europe uses 2100 for UMTS. I'm sure there's at least one carrier in the US that already uses UMTS - my phone's set up to allow UMTS on 1900+850 as well as 2100. I thought it was T-Mobile, guess not! Having said that, I know that all the Nokia handsets sold in Europe that are '3G' are all UMTS 2100 only. (I used to work for Nokia.)