Any idea how virgin and boost (and there are probably a host of others) are undercutting the big dogs so much on price? It seems like I could whack 50%+ off my family cell bill assuming I can get service where I am from a non-Verizon/AT&T provider. Is that really the only thing you get with the premium price tag from the big 2, the coverage map is more extensive?

8/1/2011 10:31:15 PM

none of their phones are subsidized and they're all (for the most part on sprint). virgin for instance has super cheap data but the minutes aren't very cheap

8/2/2011 12:50:53 AM

I think they also don't have the roaming agreements that a normal Sprint plan would, so expect a lot more areas lacking coverage. Virgin's coverage map, especially with regards to data, is basically cities and highways only.

8/7/2011 6:02:42 PM

I have two friends in the Raleigh / Morrisville area who switched to Virgin. No complaints on reception yet

Not sure on speed, but I'm really tempted to pick up the Motorola Triumph and save go from $104 to $35/mo

8/8/2011 3:55:13 PM

Switched to Virgin a few months ago, got the Optimus V. It's a decent phone, battery life is horrible though. I'm on the $40 / month plan as is my wife (in before the recent price hikes). So we pay $80 for each of us to have 1200 minutes + unlimited text & data for $80 / month. We had AT&T before and even with a corporate discount we were paying that for shared 900 minutes and 200 texts each / month (no data).

The coverage sucks if you travel off the beaten path though. My wife went to rural TN for a week for a training seminar and had zero reception. We recently traveled to NW Michigan and lost reception multiple times if we were on the smaller state highways. Even on I-77 through WV we lost signal from time to time as we wove through the mountains. Around the Triangle I've never had a problem though, so it really depends on your lifestyle.

I'm thinking we will end up switching back to a post-paid provider in the near future. The service is ok but with the service issues and poor phone selection I'm willing to sign an agreement to have a service and phone I can rely on 100% of the time.

8/9/2011 4:13:41 PM