Dr Copa

 With Christmas coming up, I’ve been thinking that might be a pretty good idea after all, getting a few extra cell phones and just leaving them in the cars all of the time.  Having cell phones with you all of the time is a great safety investment, and a good way to keep track of where everyone is. 

With all of the great Verizon cell phone deals I’ve been hearing advertised lately, I think I’ll be checking into it.  The only hitch being, with that company, the cell phone reception in our area is a total dead zone.  When we first moved here, all of our neighbors told us that Verizon cell phones were the best ones to get for here, and that is what we got, but we found that our house, and the entire surrounding fifteen miles around the house is a total dead zone for that company.   My daughter has good luck with her t-mobile phones in Maine, and they have some pretty good deals, but when she visited here last summer she found this to be a dead zone for that company, too.

My brother-in-law uses Sprint phones in Northern Virginia and swears by their service, but there isn’t anyone in this area that I know that says they’ve had good luck with them, so I’m a little reluctant to try them.

So when our contract ran out with that company last month, I went online to see if I could find some kind of map that showed the coverage areas for the different competing companies – between the major cell phone companies.  I saw that the coverage for at&t cell phones was the most comprehensive for the area in which we live so I signed up for AT&T.  I managed to get free cell phones for all three of our lines!  I was pleased as punch, too, because the plan has rollover minutes and is cheaper than the plan we had with our previous cell phone provider.  And they offered a thirty day trial period, so I decided that I had nothing to lose, and ordered their plan.  So far we’ve been pleased with that service for our location.

There is no doubt about it, cell phones are becoming a more important part of our daily lives.  I can remember, though, not too long ago when cell phones did not even exist!  I guess I’m showing my age, now, aren’t I?  My wife and I were talking recently about how when we were younger and had to drive somewhere if our car broke down we had to walk to the nearest gas station (or house) or wait for some sympathetic driver to stop and help us out.  It was just a fact of life, and we accepted it.  It was no big deal.  Now if we leave the house and find that we forgot our cell phones, we panic!  We’ve even talked about putting extra cell phones in the cars to just leave them there all the time, in case of emergency!