SIMoY2006 / The cheapest phone of all is the one you already have

I say it's time to SIMmer down with all this talk of new phones, because my PoTY2006 is still the tried-and-true Sony Ericsson T610. I just rang up the downtown T-Mobile store to find out about buying a Pay As You Go SIM, and they'll sell it without the phone for $50, which includes 150 minutes of airtime. They charge $25 for 150 minutes, so that essentially makes the SIM cost $25. At that $25/150 min. rate, that's $0.167 cents per minute for national long distance. I think that's less or equal to what we end up paying Vodafone. If you buy a higher-cost recharge, then the rate goes down to $0.125 per minute.

At first glance, the Cingular prepaid plan is not as good of a deal. Plus I like having full compatibility with my T-Mobile phone, finally.

I don't think this is a long-term solution to owning an American mobile phone, but as a way to have decent service for about a month in the US, without signing an annual contract, I'm sold.