You just asked the million-dollar question. If you use your phone at home a lot, do you have service with Provider X? See if all the carriers that service your area have good quality service there. Ask your friends.

You should add T-Mobile-To-Go to your list (if it works where you live). There are lots of regional US providers too.

Start there. Figure out who will work reliably in the places where you go. Once you have narrowed down your list to who might work well, check out the phones and the rates for coverage. You will probably find that one carrier naturally comes to the top. If more than one does, you have a tough choice.

For me, as a Canadian who is only occasionally in the US, I want good quality coverage but I also want long validity periods and inexpensive rates. I don't care at all about the phone. I have T-Mobile-To-Go for my primary US phone, and I have PagePlus so that I have coverage in more remote areas. I may eventually ditch one or the other, but between the two I have excellent coverage nearly everywhere I go in the US. (As a bonus, both work here in Canada.)

Can anyone give me an idea which prepaid service is the best? For a while I was thinking of going with Ampd, but then that changed when I read about the GoPhone (Since most of my friends have Cingular) But then I'm not sure how the whole $1 a day when you use your phone would work out for me.

Right now I have Boost Mobile and I absolutely hate it. I mean it's a good service but I barely have service in my own house and I get text messages so delayed its horrible.

Any advice or help would be appreicated