Picking a mobile data carrier these days is a lot like picking your nose: disgusting. I was paying Verizon up to $80 per month for unlimited data, and it wasn't a very fast connection (at that). I learned that they were offering a $50/month “all you can eat” plan to new subscribers, but when I asked Verizon if they'd extend me the same price – they pretty much told me to bugger off. That's when I pretty much told them that I was taking my business elsewhere.
My general purpose mobile phone is with Cingular now, and I only pay $20 a month for a (even slower) data connection, but for as much as I use it – it's fine. There are times, however, that I wish I had a fatter pipe on the road. Yeah, I could buy one of those PCMCIA cards again – but I just can't justify spending more on a mobile plan than I do for my home ISP. If coverage were more pervasive, they'd have a stronger argument. As it stands, speed ubiquity is still spotty and unpredictable.
I was accepted into the Sprint Ambassador program a few months back, not knowing what I'd do with it. They gave us unlimited data access for six months on the Sprint network. For free, it's perfect – but the service has certainly proven itself worthy of a monthly payment. I needed Sprint when I was in Iowa, as nobody in my family has anything faster than a 56k connection to the Internet. The Samsung phone put me online via a USB cable (though it didn't charge the unit simultaneously). We continued to use it when we weren't in our hotel room in North Carolina, too.
At the end of the day, whoever can give me the fastest speed for the cheapest rate will win. Mobile brand loyalty is as foreign to me as Swahili. I'm thankful that Sprint is letting me dip my toes into their world, but we'll see how their rates compare when my one-year contract with Cingular is up. At least they didn't require me to buy a separate card to get semi-broadband access to the Internet.