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What's The Best Cell Phone Calling Plan?
ChazeFroy asks: "I just got a new job that requires much travel throughout the United States, and this company is giving me $50 per month to put toward a cell phone bill. Although I found this discussion helpful, it didn't talk about cell phone calling plans. Things that are important to me are the company offering the plan, coverage (I will need nationwide coverage, most likely), number of minutes per month, the possibility of free incoming calls, and the price per month. What do you guys have, and what are your experiences?"Update: Wirefly offers a great tool these days to compare cell phone plans.
You'd be surprised... Lots of people commute daily from Philly to NYC. If you're just coding, chances are your employer would likely be agreeable to telecommuting 2 or 3 days a week.
I live in South Jersey (Burlington County), and from August, 1998 - December, 1998 (as part of a contract) I commuted daily from my home to NYC (2 WTC). My days went something like this:
The reverse trip was easy too. Back on the PATH about 5:00, catch the 5:30ish train from Newark back to Trenton. Home before 7 every night.
Oh, by the way, the 50 minute train rides make for great naps. There are also AC outlets if you need to get work done.
Cost? Work was picking up the tab, but here's what it ran me:
The NJT weekly && monthly passes permit you to ride the Amtrak unreserved trains between certain hours at no extra charge. Nicer trains, more comfy seats too.
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The unsig!
You're close.
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The unsig!
A large portion (square miles wise) of the country is only reachable on 800 AMPS analog service. If you stick to cities all the time, no problem. But if you're driving between Phoenix and Las Vegas and need to make a call, you'll be real grateful for that analog signal you have.
So when you see an advertisement for "all digital" what they are saying is "no analog" and in my mind, that's a real problem.
Personally, I'm with Verizon Wireless and with their national plan, the tri-band phones update themselves with current roaming tables so they always pick the correct band or if on analog, the correct side (A or B) and there are no extra charges for calls all over the country. You get CDMA digital calls where available and if not, you'll calls will be delivered or sent over an analog network. Analog is better than nothing...
This is a really good point. I had to use mine last month and it really saved me a lot of money. I bought my phone from Worst Buy(tm). They charged me $60 for the 3 year protection plan (better coverage than the $3-4/month plan that US Cell offers) and gave me a $50 gift certificate (worked well since I also needed a new microwave). Last month I dropped my phone onto the sidewalk. It landed on it's antenna and broke it off. I walked into Best Buy, told them what happened and kind of waved my service agreement at the kid behind the counter. He didn't ask me any questions or give me the third degree or anything. He just reached under the counter grabbed a box and said "Is this color OK?" Even threw in a brand new battery. 10 minutes later he had the phone programmed for me and I was out the door. This is by far the most impressed that I have ever been with a warranty repair/return. I was really surprised to find it coming from Best Buy.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Voicestream's coverage map can be viewed here. From experience, I know that there is no Voicestream coverage in Cleveland or Cincinnati, and by looking at the map it looks like the don't cover most of the SW US, no Chicago, and no California. I'm willing to bet that a job with a lot of travel would be frequenting at least one of the areas. GSM is far superior to CDMA and TDMA, and AFAIK Voicestream is the only provider still offering "first incoming minute free" to new subscribers, but it's too bad that it's taking Voicestream so long in providing coverage to new areas.
In South Africa, we have what's called a 'pay as you go' system.
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For about $20 you get a starter kit that gets installed in your cellphone at the shop you buy it from and comes with your PIN number and your Cell Number.
After that, you buy 'recharge' vouchers of several different denominations - i.e. call time.
These vouchers have a serial number which you reveal in the same manner as a scratch card - you then simply dial a number and punch in the serial - viola, more call time !
All incoming calls are free.
IOW, you call the shots on how much bucks you want to spend.
This system is only useful if you receive more incoming calls than you make outgoing.
I can't believe there's nothing like that in the states ? -
Hmm, come to think of it, I think it was invented in South Africa - check it out
http://www.vodacom.co.za
http://www.mtn.co.za
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
If you decide to go with the Sprint plan, here's some things you'll need to know.
Don't get the Samsung SCH-3500 model. No matter how hard they try to sell you. I've had two of these models quit on me. I finally traded it in for a StarTac and not only can you hear better on them, but they have better glow in the dark readout. And, by the way, are more compact.
If you put the phone on vibrate, so that you don't disturb anyone, such as in a business meeting or movie theatre, the phone will vibrate when you get a call, but then will RING to let you know you have missed a call. When I called Sprint about this poor design they said there is nothing they can do about it. Samsung designed the software and the hardware. When I called Samsung, they said there was nothing they could do. I would have loved to be in the design phase meetings when they made this phone.
The phone also has a keylock function. When this feature is activated, the keys won't respond, until you turn it off. This is in case you have the phone in your pocket, or where ever and you don't want to accidently dial people. The problem is, all the keys are locked behind the hard flip-top cover. All they keys, except for two. One of these non-protected keys is the OK key. Guess what it does. It turns off the key-protect feature. Guess what the other one does. It dials your voice mail (for which you get dinged for minutes). Oh, did I mention the keys on the side of the phone? They are a quick-features key. One of these gets you to the main menu where you can do all kinds of dialing damage - again, getting dinged for cell-phone minutes. Just another example of ingenuity in action.
On the plus side, the voice activated dial worked really well. The only problem is, I used it more to impress chicks, than I did for its functionality. The problems with the phone far outweigh this one little plus.
My rating: 1 out of 4 stars.
So far, AT&T and TRACFONE have tried this; AT&T recently shut down their program. Sprint is just starting theirs; endcap displays have arrived at many stores already (including my CompUSA).
Just a caveat: when purchasing a cell phone, get a bill. For an idea of what it's like to run out of cell phone time, type this into your Q3 console:
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
This might be useful for you: http://www.wirelessdimension.com
go to the consumer section then click on "Service Plan Locator". They cover a few good SPs.
The prices differ a bit, but you should have a rough idea on how much you will use your cell phone...a good start is to check you current/past cell phone bill and work it out from there.
Good luck.
My own story: Some company in NYC offered me a job for PHP/MySQL/misc. programming. After pulling the price back and forth for a while, we ended up at $60K with some benefits, with them starting at 50, and me starting at 80; A compromise which definitely ended on their side of the line. I live in Philadelphia, so traveling is not really an option. I would have to relocate. I explained this difficulty to the recruiter. He offered to lend me $5K for moving expenses, which would then be deducted from my salary.
I'm not one to kill someone for a few dollars, but if a company declined to even offer me moving expenses, I doubt that they will be very kind in the future. For better or for worse, I declined.
Posted with a recent Mozilla nightly, BTW. Just get the UI bugs out, and I'll use it guys. :)
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So.. you're getting a job which requires that you travel a lot, and in return you get a 50 buck voucher for making your calls ? I'd rather look for a new company that just refunds all business calls, no questions asked, instead of a new plan :)
Effectively cellphones are little more than pocket radios, and despite US radio scanners having the cell frequencies "blocked" (IE, the scanners skip the bands assigned to cellphones), you can still pick them up on blocked scanners due to "imaging" (Check Strong Signals and check their glossary about imaging.)
So if you want to be entirely secure, and what good Slashdotter doesn't, avoid analogue phones like the plague, or if you have no choice, at least treat them as being as secure as shouting across a crowded room.
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- Are the minutes you get useable at the times you'll be using the phone? Ignore the free minutes if they're off-peak. What are the chances you'll be doing work stuff at night.
- Are the free minutes useable to networks you'll be phoning most? Some talk plans don't include free time to other mobile networks, premium rate lines (eg tech support.. or pr0n if you have a weird job 8)).
- Is the phone billed per-second? I've heard nasty thing about some US telcos rounding a 65second call up to 2 mintues..
- Whats the coverage like? Is it going to work where you are going to be..
- What are the toys like? Are the options for things like WAP, email to the phone etc..
- Whats the phone itself like? Theres nothing worse than having a chunky, poor quality, poor interfaced phone that you need to use quickly and easily everyday.
I've heard some pretty good stories about Bell Atlantic's SingleRate tarrif, its a good network with coast to coast coverage. A couple of American consulatants I've spoken to are with the network. That said though, I'm fortunate enough to live and work in the uk, our 4 mobile operators are pretty much equal.http://twitter.com/onion2k
The *G*lobal *S*tandard for *M*obile communications is the phone standard that most of the world uses. Thankfully, it is available in the USA (although strangely on a frequency that no other continent uses for GSM). The GSM system is by far the best implementation of a cellular network, and I highly recommend that you go with it. Some highlights:
1) First of all, it's a world standard, and you know how we love standards here at Slashdot. Nonstandard networks include AT&T or Verizon (a bizzare TDMA hack) and Sprint PCS, which is a new system entirely (although they get kudos for doing something new, CDMA). In fact, there is no central corporation with GSM, only an alliance of providers and manufacturers which decide on the standards.
2) GSM isn't a just digital radio transmission protocol like TDMA or CDMA. It's quite unfair to compare "the big three" as GSM, TDMA, and CDMA. That makes no sense at all. Heck, GSM uses TDMA for its radio transmission. In reality, GSM is an entire cellular phone system, from the phones you use, to the radio towers, the whole bit. Everything about it is part of the standard.
3) GSM was built with wireless data in mind, which is why it has always supported voice, data, and SMS (short messaging service, two way paging) in its network. Every other USA service is just now catching up (read: hacking it in).
4) GSM separates owner and phone by utilizing a SIM card, which identifies you and your provider. This means that you don't even have to notify your provider when you buy a new phone. Just pop in the chip and off you go. I have several GSM phones, and I just stick the chip in the one I wish to use that day. Hmm, do I want the sweet Nokia 8890? Or the terminal-in-my-pocket Nokia 9000?
By the way, amidst the fragmented USA cellular phone market as it is, 1900MHz was assigned as the GSM frequency. This means that for a GSM phone to work here, it must support that frequency. However, some phones do both. The Nokia 8890 or the Ericsson i888 work just about everywhere in the world. And they both have IR ports for your laptops/Psions/Palms. Fun stuff indeed.
When you decide to go with GSM (and I'm sure you will), be sure to choose Powertel. From my research, they have the best value for data minutes in the USA. 600 minutes of voice (or data, no extra charge) anywhere in the USA to anywhere in the USA for $65/mo. Not bad! =)
-Justin