Choosing a mobile carrier is akin to going on a blind date. In both cases it can either be a match made in heaven or a disaster you'd rather forget. Either way the more you know at the onset the better your odds. So when you start flirting with the idea of going mobile the first two questions to consider are; how much and, for how long?

Moneywise it turns out to be a whole lot of the same since prices for similar plans hardly differ from provider to providers. However optional services -we may not need but can't seem to live without- may vary significantly. For example, that multimedia messaging service without which you'd be in tech purgatory can send your monthly fees through the roof. So it pays to shop around and avoid what can sometimes be unpleasant surprises.

A fairly recent trend has been for providers to offer 2-year plans throwing in a new discounted or free phone to sweeten the deal. Though attractive on the surface, if this marriage later goes sour the "pre-nup" you signed slaps you with a hefty $150-$250 severance penalty, forcing most of us to swallow and bear it.

There are 4 major national providers and a mind boggling number of possible plan variations so we'll focus on just their bare bones offerings. Take one popular plan the "900 -1,000 minutes with free nights & week-ends" for example. Cingular, Verizon, Sprint & NexTel all offer similar plans of 900 minutes for a monthly fee of $59.99. The only discernable difference lies in exactly when those unlimited nights and weekends start and end. Here Sprint easily comes out on top. Their nights start at the unusually generous time of 7 pm meaning you no longer have to wait until bedtime before making long phone calls. In the minutes to monthly cost ratio the cheapest is T-Mobile who offers a 1,000 minute plan for only $49.99. If you are looking to get the most minutes for your dollar then T-Mobile is hands down the choice for you.

Once you have all your pennies in order you will definitely want to take a look at coverage and customer service. According to the Better Business Bureau the cell phone industry is second only to the auto industry as the most complained about business and consistently ranks way up there in number of disgruntled customers. Our unscientific survey finds the man on the street generally has nicer things to say about their T-Mobileexperience than about other providers. Despite the fact that they are the smallest national carrier or perhaps because of it they often offer more personalized and reachable customer service.

At the other end of the spectrum is Cingular who have not been shy about trumpeting their "fewest dropped calls" spiel. Turns out this is a lot of clever marketing since we could find no definitive public report that explained just how they came to this conclusion. Cingular dropped our calls regularly even when our phone showed full bars. To add insult to injury they come out an abysmal last in general customer satisfaction. A victim of its own success, Cingular offers no nighttime customer service, leaving an answering machine to tell you to call back during business hours when you'll invariably be put on hold. This information is confirmed by their removal from the New York Better Business Bureau in August 25 2005 because of the sheer number of complaints which were not handled in a timely fashion. That said, it should be noted that they remain on the BBB of other states in which they do business.

Then of course, there remains the question that most carriers would rather you didn't ask. Will you get charged for incoming calls? This is a fine example of the mobile provider's desire to have their cake and eat it too. Just think about it. Why when I call someone using MY minutes do THEIR minutes get used up as well. Basically we are both paying for the same phone call - them to connect and me to reach them. The explanation given when you dig around is that it all has to do with cell-phone tower usage. This does not happen with landlines and is almost unheard of in other countries that have mobile phone services. European plans may offer fewer minutes for your Euro but they give you unlimited incoming calls. Stateside NexTel does have unlimited incoming calls but this plan costs $30.00 more a month than a "regular" one with the same amount of minutes.

It is only one of the things that must and will change in the cell phone industry in the future. The speed at which a mobile phone goes from hot property to the bargain basement is shocking. As with computers or other consumer technology as soon as a product rolls of the assembly line it is possible to consider it obsolete because a smaller, faster, sexier more advanced model is right behind it. And with Smartphones being the new status symbol it is not enough for your phone to just send and receive calls.

Here lies the rub because shelling out the big bucks to purchase the phone itself is just the beginning. Smartphones require specific add-ons to your basic plan in order to exploit their full capabilities such as streaming media, mp3 downloads and web capabilities. These features can be either invaluable or a Pandora's Box depending on your point of view. They have an inherent "cool" factor that makes them popular with hipsters who love being able to manage their myspace, tune in to international radio, watch TV on -what is at best- a 3" screen, synchronize their calendar and Bluetooth photos while chewing gum and walking. All these goodies will easily tack on $50 to your monthly bill. Take the one we purchased for example. The sharp looking Samsung Blackjack offered exclusively by Cingular set cost us a whopping $449.99. If we'd opted to signup for the 2 year contract and put our faith in the mail-in rebate it would end up costing us just $199.99. We got the 450 minutes with 5000 free nights and weekends at $39.99. Then in order to unleash the Blackjack's coolness, chose the $49.99 "PDA Extreme". So after paying for our phone, calling plan and Smartphone features our grand total was $539.97 down with $89.98 due monthly, not including taxes.

It's no wonder manufacturers and providers view multi-tasking mobiles as the wave of the future and are jumping on the bandwagon to stake their claim in this profitable frontier. The Holy Grail seems to be a phone that will do everything short of the dishes and but sometimes in the race to pack in as much as possible the phone gets left behind. Whichever way you cut it a cell phone is first and foremost a phone. You want it to make and receive calls. Yes, it is wonderful to have a device that does it all like the iPhone but without a good network it's just lipstick on a pig.

So read the fine print, know what you need and don't be seduced by slick marketing that forgets the device's raison d'être. No matter what they tell you, you will survive if you can't stream CNNor download Justin Timberlake on your phone but believe us you may not if you can't call back your mother in law.