Should I Buy a Phone Away From Home Area (Verizon)?

If your friends' GSM cell phones are working good in your area, they must be using Unicel. Unicel serves all of VT, and much of Northern New England. They used to have a very good National plan, it is probably still offerred.

 

And to add to this, you would probobly be better off going with them in your area vs going to Boston to get Cingular as your provider, since the phone # would end up being a Boston one & in the T&C's if you are roaming for more then 3 or 6 months they could cancel your service. I haven't heard of this happening with anyone, but anything could happen, especially if you use it all the time in your home area.
If they don't have a phone make or model you like or want, go for a free or cheap one, then you can buy an unlocked GSM phone on Ebay and pop your SIM into it, then either sell or keep the original as a backup.

 

If you get a number elsewhere, make sure you find out where you can get your phone completeley serviced outside the area code, especially if you're going to spend most of your time out of state.

I had a midwestern number for a long time and then, upon coming to college many years ago, realized I couldn't get Verizon to service my Verizon phone b/c it didn't have a local area code. (If someone wants to explain this to me, I'd love it!). AND, THEN I had problems at home after I switched my number to Boston and THEY couldn't help me at home!

 

Wirelessly posted (T-Mobile: Nokia6800/2.0 (5.58) Profile/MIDP-1.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.0)

T-Mobile (on 850 MHz) and Cingular both roam on Unicel in Vermont.

I found their coverage excellent all the way up I-89 back in April, with my T-Mobile phone.