It wasn’t all that long ago that mobile phones were a relative novelty; now it is the exception, not the rule, for anyone who goes anywhere on a regular basis not to have a mobile phone. For those considering or re-considering their mobile phone needs, the options available can be confusing.
For those who do not make or receive very many calls, it is worth considering a prepaid phone plan. Prepaid plans charge a set amount per minute, typically US$0.20/minute in the US as of the time of this writing. Some carriers offer discounts for night/weekend usage. Some offer discounts for loading more than a certain amount at a time (i.e. US$60 worth of minutes on a US$50 reload).
The catch with prepaid plans is typically that one must reload at least once every 30 days, sometimes longer for larger reloads. If it is important that one keeps the same phone number, one should keep enough cash on hand to buy one reload of the smallest denomination just in case. The possibility of buying a bunch of minutes at once and then using minimal reloads to keep the phone number active may be worth looking into if it is a good fit for one’s usage pattern. Keep in mind, with prepaid service, if an account expires the minutes/amount remaining on it are often lost.
The next step up is a monthly service plan. Many mobile phone providers offer a contract service where the month is paid for in advance instead of given on credit, with a side account used for overages, ringtones, premium downloads, etc. similar to a prepaid phone. Except for the fact one pays for the service in advance, these function almost identically to a standard post-paid plan.
The catch with monthly plans is that often one must commit to at least one, often two years of service, with a quite substantial (US$150 to US$200 being typical) cancellation penalty. This is typical with the case of buying a new phone from that carrier. With GSM phones (AT&T and T-Mobile in the US), if one already has a phone and it is unlocked, a carrier switch is usually as simple as swapping out SIM cards (a smart card which is used by the phone to identify each account holder and telephone number). Other carriers typically require you to buy a new phone for their network, as other types of phones embed the subscriber information in the phone itself in a non-user-servicable form.
One may choose to pay the full cost of the phone up front instead of signing the two-year contract. This may make sense for those who know they will need service in excess of an amount to be financially viable for prepaid, yet for less than the contract length.
The rationale for requiring the contract is that the true cost of a wireless phone handset is more in line with the non-contract price, and wireless phone companies subsidise some of the cost to get more customers, in exchange for loyalty over the contract term, making the money back from monthly fees. The wireless carrier will easily make back the subsidy on a “free” phone over the two-year contract.
Another surprise with monthly plans, is it’s easy for one to fall prey to a slick salesperson who will gladly sign one up for a 1000-minute plan, when a, say, 300-minute plan is actually a better fit. A good rule of thumb, the one I would use, is that you should ideally be using between 75% and 100% of the minutes on a plan every month, except for unlimited plans.
There is also a slightly more nerdy way of figuring what the difference between two monthly plans would buy you as an overage fee, and add the number of minutes to the lower plan. Example: 600-minute plan for US$70, 1000-minute plan for US$90, US$0.20/minute for overage. The difference is US$20, or 100 minutes, implying that even if one regularly goes over the 600 minutes in that plan by small amounts of less than 100 minutes per month, it’s still a better fit than the 1000-minute plan where that US$10 is being paid every month and most of it is not being used. This is the only way to gauge whether or not an unlimited plan is appropriate, and you should compare unlimited against the most expensive limited plan available with a price less than the unlimited plan.
Now, it should be no big surprise that what the wireless carriers are banking on is that those with 600-minute plans will go over by much more than that. The moral of the story: check your minutes remaining, and check it often, especially after long calls during peak usage hours.
Text messaging is another way to wind up poorer than expected, and should be checked in a similar way to voice service usage. If you plan to text often, you should definitely sign up for a text message bundle. Roughly the same rules apply to messaging bundles as voice usage.
I wrote an article in my personal blog back in 2008 December about the huge discrepancy between what it costs wireless carriers to provide text messages, and what is charged. I consider it especially important to not run up a huge bill by text messaging for this reason, though it is far from the only costly mistake one can make with a mobile phone. (Due to the fact I often use Twitter via text message, I have an unlimited plan; it’s not an appropriate choice for everyone, for most people who either don’t use Twitter via SMS and don’t do all that much texting, one of the smaller bundles, typically 500 or 1000 messages, is usually sufficient.)