[citation][nom]willard[/nom]There are options other than Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc. that are much cheaper. Like I mentioned, you get locked in with a contract. The big carriers are not the best value, they just make it as hard as possible to switch and reward you up front with a cheaper phone for agreeing to pay their higher rates for two years.For example, it's $110 for a single smartphone to get unlimited everything on Sprint. $120 on AT&T and you only get 5GB of data. Cricket? $55.[/citation]
There is one flawed logic with your statement. Prepaid carriers, like Virgin, Boost, and even Verizon's prepaid service, does cost less. The only issue is the fact you only limited to the native coverage, and have no access to roaming. Verizon's postpaid map is what they advertise, but, their prepaid map is actually drastically smaller in terms of coverage, especially in the western US. While I do believe T-Mobile is the only carrier offering free roaming to postpaid, it is the only one, and an option many will not choose.
Another option many don't think about is customer service. Sprint, Verizon and AT&T all will have better customer service than Boost or even Cricket. One example is Sprint's offering of the Airave for free to people who complain about poor service where they live (I believe Verizon does something similar called "Extended Network"). Boost nor cricket will offer something like this, even at a price. Why? they're prepaid.