How to choose a carrier.

There are a few basic questions you need to ask yourself when shopping for mobile phone service. The first is, where do I most often travel, what technical features do I want to take advantage of, and who has the telephone that fits my needs best?
Let's start with the main question, where do you travel most? The first sub-question to consider is, do you do a lot of rural travel, or do you spend most of your time in cities and on or near major highways. If you do a lot of "country" traveling, and/or live in a rural area, I would strongly recommend a carrier using a CDMA signal for one major reason. CDMA was the first major cellular signal in the US and has had the most time to expand and work its way into areas further out from the main population. Towers are expensive to build, and for obvious reasons they start in the most prevalent areas for usage, IE populated areas, and then work there way out into the more sparsely populated ares. Maybe you are more of a city person. If this is the case, you may want to look into a GSM carrier. Just because CDMA has the most area wide coverage, doesn't make it the perfect choice. If you spend most of your time in cities, GSM has its advantages. The one big one is the nature of the frequency. GSM has been shown to do better at penetrating structures (such as buildings) than a CDMA signal. If you rarely leave the cities, or major areas you will rarely have issues with finding signal. GSM is newer to the US than CDMA, but it has been around long enough to grow a very substantial coverage area. Another advantage is if you travel over seas, GSM is to Europe as CDMA is to us. GSM is the primary signal used in the beginning stages of Europe's cellular beginnings. So, ask your potential provider about there over seas rates, and know that you have a much greater chance of being able to use your phone instead of having to rent/lease one that will operate on the signal in your given destination. We have yet to cover Iden. This signal is somewhat limited as far as coverage area goes, but can more than make up for that with its data rich capabilities. IDEN is used primarily for business applications. Businesses tend to lean this way because they are usually in populated areas, so coverage is not an issue, and because of the data possibilities. The most commonly known is the 2-way walkie talkie type service. Most carriers now days have this, however IDEN is certainly the fastest in the fact that it works nearly instantly, whereas most other signal will have a slight delay to initiate the 2-way "session". That "instant" connection spans beyond the 2-way feature, it also allows for more instant connections for other data intensive purposes. If you are looking for a service primarily for voice communications, you may want to look elsewhere.
With the basics of signal covered, the next item is the device, and what carrier offers the device most suited to your needs. Phones currently have so many features and designs to offer, that we will save this for the next posting to cover this in proper depth.