Back when I was first comparing mobile phone internet service providers, T-Mobile was $20/month for their slow 40-80kbps GPRS service while Verizon was $80/month for their blazing fast 400kbps EVDO service. Since I'm cheap frugal, I decided to go with T-mobile and I'm happy with that decision. Apparently other people have been too, since Verizon has been feeling the heat and will drop the price of their EVDO service to $60/mo. I'm still sticking with T-mobile, though. I need internet on the road only occasionally, so I can put up with the slow speed and use that extra $40/mo for better things.
From the ArsTechnica coverage:
In an effort to win more customers and expand coverage, Verizon announced today that it would drop the price of its wireless broadband service by 25 percent until year's end. Citing industry insiders as sources, analyst Albert Lin predicted that Verizon Wireless would drop the price of its US$80/month Broadband Access high-speed wireless plan to about US$60 in an effort to gain market share. Verizon, the No. 2 mobile service in the US, led the competition in offering wireless broadband services to mobile devices and laptop computers using the Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) technology as early as 2003.
In other news, I notice that T-mobile is now selling the Motorola Razr V3 on their website, finally. T-mobile is consistently 3-4 months behind other vendors in selling the latest GSM phones. They still don't offer the Treo 650, which is my droolphone of choice.
that's a smart choice if all one needs is access to e-mail.
Verizon's EVDO service is going to have competition from Sprint and Cingular in the next few months.
T-mobile raised the price this summer to $29/month for their GPRS service. Bummer.