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The Onstar cell phone service is quite expensive. Your wife should keep a cell phone. What Onstar offiers that you can't get with a cell phone is: 1. Emergency services are called automatically if the air bag goes off and the Onstar operator can't contact the driver. This is something to seriously consider if your wife will be driving in a remote area where she might have an accident and run off the road where nobody could see her car. 2. If you car is stolen, the vehicle can be located (like LoJack). This can save you money on insurance, although probably not much on a 2001. The satellite piece of Onstar is strictly GPS for locating the vehicle. Communications are all over analog cell phone. If you need analog cell phone service, see if you can get a phone that has both analog and digital. You have to ask, because most providers don't want to sell you one. I have a Nokia 6340i "GAIT" phone from Cingular, which does Analog/TDMA/GSM. Cingular doesn't offer GAIT phones anymore, but if you can find one of these (eBay?) you should be able to get a Cingular dealer to activate it. This is not a particularly great phone, but I have used it in some pretty remote places. Last year I talked to a Cingular dealer who told me they keep a few in the back for customers who need to drive in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where even analog service is spotty.
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