You may recall a popular article I posted last year that explained how to make your cellular phone carrier drop you by forcing them to lose money, a process that might take, unfortunately, at least three months.

With AT&T preparing to "de-brand" their Cingular Wireless service and the announcement of the iPhone earlier this week, you may want to think a little harder about getting out of your existing Cingular contract.

This interesting piece from The Consumerist explains how to get out of your contract, and without paying a cancellation fee. The article features a detailed "script" actually used by a Cingular customer to cancel his agreement after eight years. (This method can also be used to switch your contract to a month-to-month agreement.)

Like the earlier protocol, you will spend some serious time on the phone, but at least it won't take three months or more, and it will work.

By the way, in case you did not know it Cingular is changing names again, back to AT&T. If you want to understand how this complex transistion occured after you need to watch Colbert's hilarious video on the subject.

Another option that may work for all carriers is to move to an area where that provider has no coverage.

By "moving" to a non-covered location, you can easily call up Sprint, Verizon or T-Mobile and get out of your contract without paying a termination fee. Of course, it is not entirely sure it'll work if you "move" instead of actually move, since the company may demand to see some utility bills with your name on it.