Cell Phone Plan Recommendations for 2003?

scubacuda asks: "What do techies think about the plethora of cell phone plans out there? (While accompanying a friend at the Sprint kiosk, I couldn't help but dissuade several people from signing up with Sprint.) When I told a friend about my new AT&T "minutes w/o limits" plan ($99/mo for unlimited ANYWHERE minutes), he talked to Nextel and had them match the plan. What plans do you consider to be the best, and when have you been successful in negotiating your plan down?" Ask Slashdot did a similar question during November of 2000. It's amazing how fast cell phones have been adopted by people worldwide, and I think it would be interesting to see how much more you can get for your buck now, as opposed to then.

Comments

Is there a METAplan?

[MacAndrew]

I studied these plans, too, until selecting on that seemed more-or-less like what we needed. I know some enjoy the probability analysis and projection involved in picking the best deal, but I don't. And of course many of the plans seem calculated to lure you into paying too much for less than you expect.

What I'd like to know is whether there is a secret plan to rule all plans? Is there some published business school game theory logic to the design of these things? Are they arrived at with the same guesswork that we use to choose the plan? Obviously there are a few hard numbers in the actual cost of carrying the calls plus overhead, but beyond that what marketing (il)logic takes over?

If we had that information as consumers, think of valuable insight.

The only rules I know offhand are (1) people like prices ending in .95; (2) people (certainly Americans) hate being nickled-and-dimed to death, preferring even flat rate plans that cost more; and (3) the merchant wants to tempt you to overconsume even for a small incremental profit (i.e., get you to buy a large soda for just 20 more even though you wanted a small).

what do you want?

[Numeric]

i think in general most cell phone providers are the same, however, if you are looking to extend your cell phone usage beyond talking (i.e. SMS, WAP, MMS, etc..), providers vary.

Earlier this year, I chose Verizon and here's what lead me to convert from Sprint.

1. SprintPCS at the time didn't have coverage where my parents live so I would ROAM. ROAMing is one thing that you don't want. ROAMing is premimum and it would cost me like $.25 just to talk for a minute. (check coverage area)

2. I wanted WAP and SMS. ATT has SMS but not WAP. SprintPCS was already eliminted because they didn't have coverage. (check phone func.)

3. I wanted free long distance. ATT and Verizon non-peak minutes start at 9pm so I have to wait til then to make a majority of my calls. SprintPCS allowed me to make calls at non-peak calls at 8pm. (check rates)

4. Lastly, I wanted a cool phone at the time the Motorola v60 was a kick ass phone. It was smaller than my other phone and supported SMS and WAP. (check phone)

I never considered the other providers like Nextel.

Hope this helps.

Re:How about cricket?

[elmegil]

I'm still a sprint customer, but only because the number and rate of change of all the other plans has prevented me from figuring out who would be better.

Sprint screwed me when I moved; I had a plan that worked well for me (corporate plan: $9.95 a month for service, pay for all minutes, try not to use it much. Minutes were reasonably cheap.), but when I moved to a new city, they doubled the cost of the minutes without saying that was what they were doing. When I *do* get around to checking the other plans, Sprint is no longer in the running.

Service and equipment is more important

[pauljlucas]

I have 300 anytime and 4000 nights/weekends from Verizon (where "night" starts at 8pm). I never come anywhere close to using all the minutes. Hence, I really don't care about plans. Verizon service has been great here in the SF bay area. Verizon does in fact have the largest network. The few calls I've had to make to customer service went well, i.e., they took care of my problem.

I currently have the Kyocera 6035 and it works perfectly with Verizon: 2-way SMS, free POP3/SMTP access, web. I'm waiting for the Kyocera 7135 that will be offered on Verizon probably within a month. It's a very sweet phone/PDA.

I can strongly recommend against Sprint. Sprint has the largest all-digital network, but it's still smaller than Verizon's digital + analog network. The upshot is that if you're on analog on Verizon, there's no roaming charges since they own the analog towers; with Sprint, any time you are on analog, you are roaming by definition, and pay roaming charges accordingly. Note how Sprint never mentions this in their commercials. Anyway, Verizon is all-digital in cities and is converting the rest.

I was in downtown Sunnyvale, smack in the middle of Santa Clara ("Silicon") valley, and was roaming with Sprint. Also virtually no signal on the bay side of 101 in Mountain View; same on the north end of downtown Santa Cruz.

Sprint doens't offer true 2-way SMS; they never worked right with the Kyocera 6035 (*2 was broken a lot), and no free e-mail/web access.

Sprint does tend to have some cooler phones (and some dumb ones with silly features like screensavers), but do you want a phone that looks cool or works well?

(No, I don't work for Verizon.)