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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.
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