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Roaming calls are those made or received when you are physically outside your rate plan's home coverage area. If you are traveling outside that area, you can incur roaming charges when talking to someone regardless of where they are, even if they happen to be standing right next to you. Most roaming charges can be avoided with the selection of a national rate plan (see page 18).
Throughout this guide, we've highlighted a number of issues that affect what you will pay for your cell phone and your plan. In this section, we offer a bit of background on the economic factors of the wireless industry to help explain why plans and phones are priced the way they are and how wireless companies make money.
Carrier coverage maps are only a starting point; check with friends or neighbors who use the carrier you are considering to find out their experiences. Take full advantage of the trial period offered by most carriers.
While the text messaging discussed above is actually a form of e-mail, most cell phones will also let you send and receive e-mails from web-based providers such as AOL Mail, MSN Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Most PDA devices will let you retrieve POP3 e-mail (e.g., Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express).
The following features, when included for free in your rate plan, can significantly reduce the number of anytime minutes you'll need each month. Consider them in conjunction with your own calling patterns to determine how advantageous each one would be for you. Where not included in the rate plan, airtime otherwise associated with these benefits will count against your anytime minutes.
It is worth noting that a more expensive phone doesn't necessarily mean better reception. Higher-priced phones are often more feature-rich, and may have slightly better microphones, yielding better voice clarity. However, all phones sold for a given carrier's service are built to the specifications of that carrier, so they should all have roughly the same signal strength in a given location.
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