Back when I got my first mobile phone my only interest was in getting the best cellular phone service and the company perks and the phone’s gadgets didn’t mean that much to me. It was the best reception I was after as well as the most extensive network so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing my cellular phone service in a more remote area.

When it was time to shop around for a new phone and consider a new cellular phone service provider I realized that the difference between them in terms of network quality wasn’t as much as it used to be. For someone like me who travels a lot locally but doesn’t travel the world—or at least care if my phone works when I’m out of the country—there isn’t a provider who offers an bad connection. While a lot of them are better than the other on paper in one way, the competition is better in another way. In the end, what I have discovered through friends and my own little bit of research, there isn’t really a cell phone network around right now that will ever make phone calls frustrating.

The only service flaw I’ve noticed amongst the different mobile service providers my friends and I have used lately is that one may work better in this basement and the other will work better in that basement. The same thing seems to be true for areas with tunnels and tall buildings. A lot of that is depending on where the network’s towers are located and not always which one is more powerful. My last cellular phone service provider boasted the most powerful network but my friend’s phone still picked up in places mine wouldn’t.

So now I look more at the bonuses I get with each package. Things like how the minutes are billed and clocked and what kinds of data services are provided have become more important to me. While basic things like voice mail, caller id and call waiting have become nearly standard amongst cellular phone service packages, there are other things that make one network stand out above the next.

The cellular phone service that I’m now on, for instance, didn’t offer me free months of picture messaging as an introductory offer like their competition was offering. In the long run though, I discovered that their picture messaging cost less and after the free months would have been up, that cost was the most important thing. A few years back this would have seemed like an insignificant point to me, but with cameras being on all the phones now it appeared to be something I would use.

With my business life becoming more wired I’ve found that emails are growing more important to me as a need. I looked into things like text messaging and internet access from different cellular phone services and determined that, again, there wasn’t a lot of difference in how they operated. The company I went with, however, offered a better rate for data transfers.

What I’ve wound up with is a cellular phone service that is on a network technically inferior to the rest in town. But it offers the features I like to use the most at the best possible price and I haven’t had a single problem yet with my reception.

Christopher M. Luck has an extensive background in working exclusively with the top cell phone services in the industry and is now offering his free professional cell phone advice to the public. If you are at all interested in Christopher's personal technology health advice, tips, or secrets, you can visit his technology blog

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