You might try getting the hang of either infrared or blue tooth.  Your
first month of mMode is free (not including overages) so you should sign
up for the largest plan first, to let you play with it and get
everything set up, then switch to a lower plan your second month.

Yea, make up some really outragous story saying stuff about the
equipment/service and they should let you out of your contract, once you
sign up with another carrier it will all happen again and you will
screwed twice as hard, the grass isnt always greener on the other side,
good luck with your new cell service and horrible service/customer
service

wtm2015@yahoo.com (WIlliam McGowin) wrote in article
<vn6cf5ht0nvteb@corp.supernews.com>:

You ain't getting out of your contract, unless you've got 175.00 burning
a hole in your pocket. AT&T Wireless is anal about contracts, if you've
got one, they've got you by the balls, and they really like balls.

"Yes, you should let me out of my contract.  I've been a loyal customer
since the stone age.  I'm mad because I ran up a huge bill, and you
didn't act like my mommy and stop me from doing it!"

Is that something like what you were thinking?  Get off it, grow up,
show some backbone and be responsible for your actions.

Some carriers support circuit switched data, and those that do tend not to
charge for it.  When I was with T-Mobile a few years ago, I could dial in to
my ISP and just use minutes (9600 baud).  I'm currently with Verizon, and
they allow 14.4K connections as just uses minutes.   I've been told Sprint
allows the same.  In other words, there is at least 3 major carriers that
allow "free" access to their low-speed data.   The "free" comes from having
unlimited nights and weekend minutes-- so any service that uses minutes
truly doesn't cost you if you don't mind using it off-peak.

The slowness of the data isn't a problem for me, as what I'm trying to
access isn't huge and the data access is more or less a convenience (check
email from the road with SSH etc).  I have a palm phone (Kyocera 6035) and
it can dial in via PPP and get avantgo content etc. and just uses minutes.
Anyway, this was one of the key appealing things for Verizon when I switched
from AT&T a few years ago.

Verizon has recently stopped advertising this free data service which is a
bad sign.  They also added, then later removed 50% of the geographic
coverage in my home state of Oregon from their America's Choice plan.  All
this while I'm under contract.  Since both Verizon's and AT&T's coverage in
Oregon depends heavily on roaming partners, the network plans are a bad idea
here.  (It's either not included, or if it is now, it can be taken away
without notice).

-Dan

PS: There is some risk that each of the carriers mentioned above could take
away this feature at any time to force users to buy their premium data
services.  To my knowledge, that hasn't happened yet, but it's an issue
worthy of consideration.

---
Eugene, Oregon -- Pacific Northwest
http://cell.uoregon.edu