I have two Droids on my Alltel plan, I asked how much it would cost and they said no plan change needed, I got the new every two discount on mine as well.
However, there is a problem, the merger as far as towers go is still not complete and won't be for about another year. So those on an Alltel plans are still using Alltel towers, those on a VZW plan use the VZW towers. But the Droid is optimized for the VZW network. When I'm at home, I have an Alltel tower very close to me and I get fantastic 3G coverage just as I had fantastic coverage on my BlackBerry 8330. But when I go into the city, my signal on my Droid jumps all over the place. I go from 1x to 3G to nothing changing every few seconds in some areas. I met friends for lunch at Chili's and had no 3G, my friend next to me with a VZW 8330 had full signal. I went back to that area with an Alltel 8330 and it had full signal but the Droid was wacked out!
Swapped out Droid once in case it was defective but issue remained. I have a trouble ticket started and hopefully they will be able to get it working reliably.
Here is what they think is the problem: At home, not too many towers around so it is picking up the Alltel tower no problem, but in town there are tons of towers and the phone is having a hard time choosing one on the network it is not optimized for. I drove around yesterday and compared an Alltel 8330 to my Droid. There were times when the Alltel 8330 would briefly go to 1x but within seconds would get a solid fix and be on 5 bars 1XEV(full data coverage). The Droid however was bouncing like crazy between 1x Rtt, EvDo rev.A, and EvDo rev.0 then it would lose the 1x and 3G and just have 1 or 2 bars and no data apps would work at all. Switching the phone to airplane mode then back again could get me to get some choppy data coverage back as long as I was parked but driving around it would be lost which makes having that uber cool google navigation with voice totally useless
I only got the Droids because I could stay on my Alltel plan, not just for the $30 per month I save, but also because I used to have VZW but switched to Alltel because VZW had lousy service at my house. I couldn't even have a phone convo unless I stood in one certain spot and if I even turned my head I would drop the call....so if I switch to the VZW plan I will have great data in town but at home and work since I work at home, I will be screwed.
But I've got 2 1/2 more weeks for them to figure out a way to fix it or I may have to turn these babies back in
my son especially will not be happy to go back to his 8130 pearl!