I'd also love to have an iPhone, but the service plans you have to take illustrate there is no competition (can you say "monopoly"?) and show highway robbery is not a lost art, so it is easy for me to see I don't actually need one.

In fact, considering that cell service is generally of poor quality everywhere, it really doesn't matter much which service provider you choose. As my contract with T-Mobile had recently expired I looked for the best deal I could find.

Again, if there was really any competition in the cell market, then I would find pricing plan variation from carrier to carrier, particularly in these tough times. But no such luck, which tells you that cellular service is not really a competitive market (can you say "ya think?!").

Anyway, I looked around for the best deal which turned out to be with . Accordingly, I placed my order for three phones via Sprint's Web site and requested that our home number, which was on a Vonage line that didn't get much use, be ported over to my wife's phone. Voila, the new plan and the loss of the Vonage line equaled a savings of more than $100 per month (that's a lot of moderately priced Cabernet).

Then the fun began. The phones arrived in the evening a couple of days after ordering so I immediately set about getting them working (can you say "this probably won't turn out well"?).