I only use my cell phone when traveling ... which plan/provider should I use?

I have a cell phone. It’s a prepaid Tracfone. I have it pretty much just for emergencies, on rare occasions when I have to meet my wife out in the city, etc. I make maybe 10 mins. worth of calls every month. I think it’s great, and I esp. love the call- and payment-tracking aspects of it, and the fact that I don’t end up wasting money on unused airtime or getting screwed if I use more minutes than I thought were in my plan (I hate dealing with my wife’s cell phone bills ea. month…).

BUT…

I’m traveling a lot more these days, both for work and for family reasons. So I’m finding it useful to have a phone in those locations (i.e., everywhere but my home or office). As a result, the concept of the “home calling area” is pretty useless to me, as I almost never use the phone when I’m home. And I don’t consistently go to another single location often enough to make THAT my home calling area. I’m pretty much all over the place–Colorado, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, western Mass., upstate N.Y., …

So, what plan/provider should I get? I still don’t make a TON of calls when I’m traveling, but this past month I probably put at least a half-hour’s worth of calls on my calling card–calls it would have been easier to make from my cell phone, but the roaming charges quickly become to ridiculous.

Can I designate a “home roaming area”? If the company charged me exorbitant roaming fees only while I was within the NY Metro area, and normal rates everywhere else, that would solve my problem. :wink:

Um, make that “too” ridiculous.

Yargh.

Nextel doesn’t have a roaming charge. As an all digital network, you are either in a service area or not, but it’s one flat fee, unless you go over minutes.