[TheRealVille]

The discount is only worth noting if it makes your bill less than the competitor. If you have unlimited talk and text through AT&T, you pay $89.99 plus tax per month. 18% off of that still leaves you with a cell phone bill of almost $74.00 per month not including taxes, which is still $5.00 more expensive per month than Appalachian Wireless.

And the 50% rule is why I mentioned that our services would be no good to the OP who lives in Russell County. But what is commonly misconstrued about the 50% rule is that people think it is based on a month-to-month basis, which is false. They calculate a 3 month average to make sure you are within the 50%. But one thing I will say, my mother has AW and she lives in Beckley, WV and has lived there since December and has yet to receive any type of letter from AW. I'm not saying the rule isn't enforced, it's just not as big of a deal as it used to be, especially since us and Verizon are on such good terms and have much more affordable roaming rates with Verizon.

One more note that you don't mention, is that in virtually every city in the US you can go to an ATT store and get help. How does that work out for the Appalachian customers? Not to mention the #1 phone in America, the iPhone isn't available with Appalachian. Appalachian has only crappy phones. Some friends, and my oldest daughter have Appalachian, and they say the signal isn't all that you advertise. I will gladly pay 5 bucks extra for the top notch customer service that ATT has. My daughter dropped her iphone 4 and busted the screen, and without us having insurance, the Pikeville store replaced it free of charge. Warranty didn't cover the drop either, they just opted to replace it themselves. At 5 bucks a month, it will take some time(80 months) to come up with that 400 bucks for her phone.