Plan Types

Local/Regional Plan: These are the plans that make the most sense for the "average" user that doesn't travel outside of their home area very often. For example, AT&T and Verizon offer local plans that include all coverage (roaming or not) within Oregon and Washington. These plans are easy to understand and well-defined, and as such, recommended. The only "gotcha" with these plans is that they often do not include nationwide long distance, however, this option tends to be offered as a promotion at various times during the year, or can be typically added for a monthly fee. The cost may not be much more to get a national network plan with long distance included, but be aware that a network plan may have some roaming areas in your home state (which is why a local plan may be a safer bet, or go with a truly national plan and no roaming anywhere).

Network Plans: These plans offer limited nationwide coverage. Users must pay attention to their phone's roaming indicator. Determine your carriers native coverage area. If that coverage area works well for you, then these plans can be a great bargain. If, on the other hand, you depend heavily on roaming coverage, even if it is included, be very careful as that coverage can change on you even during a contract. Example of this is Verizon's AC plan. If I were Verizon, I'd drop all roaming fees on the AC plan given that AT&T and others have moved to low-priced no roaming options.

NO ROAMING FEES NATIONWIDE, PLUS INCLUDED NATIONWIDE LONG DISTANCE

DOR/SingleRate: Historically these plans included AT&T's Digital One Rate, or Verizon's SingleRate which offer truly no-roaming plans anywhere in the nation. I'm assuming both of these options still exist, but may not be price competitve.These are typically the business traveler plans, and are relatively expensive but make billing understandable. They offer the best coverage area due to the technology used (TDMA/analog) or (CDMA/analog).

NEW CHEAP LIMITED OPTIONS: Sprint offers an option called Free and Clear America which allows their users to roam for free anywhere in the nation provided their roaming usage does not exceed 50% of their total usage. AT&T offers GSM america which is a truly no roaming plan, however, GSM coverage is much smaller geographically than their older TDMA/analog coverage area (or even Verizon's CDMA/analog covearage area). These deals appear to be really good if all you need to voice coverage and don't want to worry about roaming charges provided the included coverage area works for you.

What I Recommend: It's unclear to me which is best at the moment. It used to be a whole bunch cheaper to get a local plan, and easy to understand coverage area (even if not nationwide) and that was the obvious choice for the non-frequent traveler. You now have several national plans that may work equally well for you, that are only an "ouch" more expensive than the local plan. i.e. Why not grab the national coverage plan if it's reasonably priced?

The local plan will still win for the cheapest plan options (the starter plan), but once you decide you use your phone enough to need a $40/month plan then it becomes unclear. You really have to study the coverage maps, and if you care about data use find out availability and cost for data and factor that in too. There really isn't a one size fits all, and there appear to be more options this year than last year (so that's a good thing).

Whatever you do, really test a new provider during the test period (15 days?) and return the equipment during that time if you are displeased with service. After that grace period, you tend to get locked into a contract, so you really need to test things out as best you can.