Do you, perchance, work for a large investor-owned utility in the Carolinas ?

I do, same deal (reimburse for personal data plan) and the same due date. I think that we are getting the short end of the stick (the advertised reimbursement is less than any data plan costs per mo, and doesnt include a voice plan....

That being said.

1) Jailbreaking may not be an option - my company's plan says that you must install a corporate-approved app to recieve company email/calendar stuff on your PMD - and that this approved software will not work on jailbroken iphones (not a surprise). this might be just a scare tactic, but its something to know if they are talking about "installing a special app for corporate data"
The phone will work just fine without the corporate app

2) deleted.

3) IIRC, the two top models right now are the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the iphone 5 - they'll do anything a phone can do nowadays. I dont keep up on this stuff that well so my info may be old.
I know that older iphones can be had for free with a 2yr contract.

4) many phones nowadays can become a 'mobile hotspot' - where you turn on a setting on the phone, and it becomes a wifi hotspot, then you connect to that with your iPad/wifi-only device - works, but your connection speed is still limited by whatever speed your phone can get and it consumes phone battery quicker. Speed varies widely by location.

5) I am not rich enough to own any apple devices, but my understanding is that there are a few "synergistic" benefits to owning multiple apple devices - sharing files is easier, you can allow yourself to remotely wipe one device from another (in case you lose one?), itunes music shares and syncs through easier - all of these services can be replicated with other opener-source tools but Apple makes it easy from what I hear.

Just some things to keep in mind.

-John

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