The best money saving practice for buying new cellular phones and service plans is to buy from a dealer, not through the cellular provider directly. Dealers compete against each other with lower prices than the actual cellular providers do.

The reason for this is that dealers are much smaller and rely solely on cell phone revenues. The actual cellular providers themselves have many other fronts, battles, and sources of revenue, so price satisfaction in any one sector is not always available.

For Example: AT&T or Verizon has cellular, but also have local phone service, long distance, satellite, and so forth. A dealer only sells cellular; thats it. Dealers usually will offer just about every existing cellular providers services so the convenience of one stop shopping is an additional feature.

Online dealers are the most convenient source for shopping and comparing plans. You can shop low dealer priced plans from online and save even more.

A great and smart idea, before you buy into any cellular service plan, is to have a friend or family member let you borrow their phone(s) for a day at the least. By doing this you can travel to all of your frequent hotspots to make sure you will receive decent signaling with that cellular provider on a regular basis. Just taking someones word for it is not good enough, especially if they are trying to sell you the service. Try a test drive; its your smartest bet. Remember, purchasing the best plan will be worthless if you can never use your phone. Coverage is the first factor to any cellular plan period.

If you have friends with a diverse set of cellular providers, try each one out to determine which one is most reliable for your daily activities. Take your friends feedback as well; they will be very helpful on subjects of billing, quality of service, and other important consumer information.