Which is the best cellphone service in New York?

I understand how important it is for folks like you who want to be in contact with their family and friends while they are not in the country. As you said that it is only a matter for a year or so that you have to in New York, well in this case I would strongly advice you not to go for the contract plans in any of the service.

The biggest disadvantage for you using the contract based plans is that these contract plans put a fine on those who wants to terminate their plan before the given time. And in your condition the time is not fixed which makes it a lot more difficult for you carry with the contract based plans.

Prepaid plans would be the best suited choice for your case, as you said that you even need to make some international calls therefore no other plan could be well suited for you other than the prepaid plan. I would also like to advice you one of such plans keeping in mind about your needs, you can go for the prepaid international services provided by Verizon.

Here you can find a wide variety of plans depending upon the place you want to call. Like for Puerto Rico the charges are $0.10/min for landline numbers, $0.29/min to wireless numbers in Canada, U.S. Virgin Island etc.

Similarly you can find the charges for your place which depends upon the distance from the place you want to make the calls.