Slashdot Mirror
Crunching the Numbers On Shared Cellphone Contracts
itwbennett writes "The Wall Street Journal has a handy online calculator to help you sort out which phone plan is best for you. But one thing you'll notice is that shared or 'family' plans rarely offer any real savings, or benefits beyond the convenience of having a single bill, says blogger Kevin Purdy, who is bracing himself to propose a phone plan separation with his wife."
A shared plan can be billed to the main tax payer in the 'family', making it much easier to gang costs and take a reduction, especially when a small business is involved.
I priced it out using that calculator for 4 lines (unlimited voice, unlimited messaging, 2GB data per line). T-Mobile costs $140/month for a shared plan vs. $240/month for 4 individual plans. For 2 lines it'd be $100/month shared vs. $120/month for 2 individual plans. I see exactly the opposite of the claim: the shared plan is more economical than individual plans for everything but the most limited usage. And that T-Mobile's plans are more economical than anybody else's, which may explain why T-Mobile had such a good quarter.
The "wifi first" aspect of the service is what makes it so cheap. The more minutes you use over wifi the less time republic has to lease from it's provider. That looks great on paper.....really great! But then you have to look at the state of wifi these days, and more specifically secured wifi. You can only piggyback your calls from an open wifi connection or one you have a password/login to use. More and more homes and small businesses are using passphrases to secure their network. Even if that password is "password" it does you no good when you drive by and the network declines you access and passes your call to the cell network.
Ting is a great company, and I'm a happy customer, too.
Parent is a sleazy spammer for posting a referral link without mentioning that it earns him $25 as well.
Go directly to https://ting.com/, or find a friend who's using it and use their referral link. Screw sneaky spammers.
I use ting.com too. I realize silas_moeckel and I are going to come across as shills, but Ting is supremely cheap provided A. you don't use tons of data ( much past 2GB of data use and Ting doesn't save you money versus the other carriers) and B. you live in an area where Sprint reception doesn't suck, since Ting uses their network.
It's hard not to sound like a shill for Ting, after you've dealt with traditional cell providers for so long. When you finally find one that has great prices, treats you like an important customer, has real people helping you (and fast) and eliminates all the bullshit gimmicks and fees and everything else . . . well, it's hard not to get over-excited when you try to show other people that they can jump off the shit-train of Sprint/Verizon/AT&T and so on.
(Also, you'll notice that I'm such a fan of Ting that I never post a referral link when I recommend their service -- it's so cheap that I don't need $25 for referring a customer and I'd rather people check it out without feeling slimy about it).
The calculator is also wrong.
According to this calculator, I should be paying $210/month before any taxes and fees, with my particular carrier and profile. I am, in fact, paying $140 after all taxes and fees. Given that it provides incorrect information for what I know, I don't feel I can trust it to provide me correct information for comparison purposes.
Do you have a current plan or are you grandfathered in to a better plan that's no longer available?
My current rate plan is cheaper than what the calculator gave, but when I compared to a new plan on the carrier's website, it matched.