U Prepaid!

Really quickly, this is the Alltel prepaid that we've been waiting for for a few days but have yearned for forever. Granted, the entry price ($15 for the Kyocara SoHo plus $35 to activate plus $20 for the minimum initial airtime = $70) is on the steep side but get this: for the first time on a name brand prepaid you have unlimited expiration. If you don't use a minute every thirty days you get charged $4 which is no fun, but if you remember to call someone (or yourself) once a month you've just found the third cheapest-per-month prepaid service EVER (1st and 2nd are Beyond Wireless and STi, which are in basically a deadlock) at 15 cents a month and the furthermore it has more non-roaming service than the combined home areas of STi and Beyond combined, even if just the square miles were added up for both and no overlap was assumed! Now that's what I call good: a $70 prepaid package that can last up to 130 months...not that the phone itself would last that long but anyway...

Oh and by the way you can get internet access on U Prepaid for $20 a month. Granted, it's steeper than STi or Boost but again its coverage area dwarfs that of both combined and it has the speed of STi and costs less than a month of 'net access from Virgin Mobile or Verizon (INPulse and EasyPay now have web at 99 cens a day), or 2 MB from Cingular (1 cent per KB).

What are you going to use the internet for? To download spiffy apps for your new $305 ($250 plus activation and airtime) Alltel CDMA Razr of course! Or your $70 SoHo. Or a huge number (for prepaid) of phones in between.

As an unrelated sidenote, I received a Boost i450 as the object of a trade (for my i415) today. I'll tell more later, but my first impressions are small screen, wierdly slow processor, good reception for both cellular and GPS and a form factor small enough to actually be mistaken for one of the larger "normal" (CDMA\TDMA\GSM) modern phones! As another sidenote, even more unrelated, my 15th birthday is the day of the SAT, as in this Saturday the 28th. Yes I'm that age and no I don't need anyone to wish lottery luck on my venture into SAT land; last time I made a 1390. Wish me a good one if you want...and again click those ads like your phone would go dead without them ;).