School me on prepaid cell phones.

I want to drop my land line and dial up service. I want to switch over to cable. I have a regular cell, and would want one for occasional use, emergency use.

occasional or emergency only.If you use one on a regular basis it adds up quick.If you end up buying more than $50.00 in minutes a month you are better off getting a subscription/contract for one.

The pre pay would only be used when one person goes out and needs to call home.

What costs are there above the cost of the minutes and the buying of the phone?


In eight years I've gone over my 400 minutes once and that was when I was district captain in the last election.

Actually, it was mine until I got a contract and gave her mine. It's good. It can be cheap. The minutes are usually pretty high-- 10 cents or more--but you only pay for what you use.

One hitch--most have some kind of expiration limit or minimum required usage. Mine is Virgin Mobile, for instance. You have to add minutes at least every 90 days or you lose the minutes and number. I think you have to use minutes every 60 days, or something. It's not hard to maintain, obviously, but you can't stick it in a drawer and forget it for six months. Some you may be able to, I don't know.

Reception is good on VM. I can use it at my parents' house in Mississippi, and my T-Mobile won't work there. I think it's that GSM/CMSA (or whatever the initials are) thing. The phone is a good quality, though they make a couple of cheap ones that look very flimsy.

That's all I got.

We do have Cingular, Verizon, and T Mobile. I guess I will have to use some of my minutes tomorrow.

if they are there, then Virgin should be there. It is a little more per minute than other plans -but if you don't use much - you spend much less. I used virgin for awhile until I found that I was using more than where it was cheaper. Nice thing is there is no contract. Easy to switch if/when finds one needs to.

Now i use nexel for phone (and have no land line) and just dumped the cable modem for wireless/moble broadband through sprint. Just using it for a month, but so far is just as fast as cable modem, with fewer problems.

Is it a flat rate or by the minute?

$50 a month. If you are in market with good competition - it is expensive. Not much competition - it is competitive with cable. The thing I like is that I live/work in two locations this works in both - so I can cancel two payments and pay one and use this from both locations. It is as fast (maybe a little faster?) than the cable modem. It was bumpy in the first couple of days - but that ended up being more user problems. Still new to it - but I am saving money and can use it from anywhere - and for me, that flexibility is a great benefit.

and I love Sundance.

Mobile computing is not as important to this retiree.

They have a coverage map on their web site. virginmobile.com.

For a while it was my only phone. I don't use a phone much, and it was cheaper than a land line. I only got a full contract phone because I needed to get a phone for my daughter, who was becoming increasingly hard to keep track of. So I gave her mine, and got a T-Mobile.

Didn't work, she usually forgets to charge it or carry it, unless she's expecting a call from friends.

I am leading a precinct walk during campaigns.

I also have Virgin Mobile.

It automatically adds $15.00 worth of time every 90 days, so it costs only $60.00 a year, plus tax.

We only use it when absolutely necessary, so after a year, I have about $50.00 worth of minutes on it. However, it has been priceless the few times we needed to use it.

costs. My land line cost nearly $40 a month, and my dial up service costs $21.95, I can save $30 a month by bundling internet with my cable service, and dumping the others.

don't expire. I got the phone in May 2004 and any minutes I buy are good until June 2008. With them you do have to make one call a month, if you just call their office it counts or they will charge you a $4 fee for the month.

about $21 in my account but I had $61, somehow I was credited with $40 worth by accident I will be good for years now.

you are charged $4.00 all you need to do is make one call and there are no fees and your minutes don't expire. Sometimes I just call my own land line and hang up when the answering machine picks up. All the others I checked out at the time your unused minutes were lost after 45 days, so you are forced to pay a bill every 45 days to keep your phone service.

available.

Google "pre-paid phone plans" and look for CNET and Amazon reviews. You also want to review the phone you pick in the plan, also. Some phones and their plans look "good" but are still kinda buggy.

Haele

most consumer sites.

land line went up in price three times in three months, so I dumped it and got Vonage, where I comfortably fit into their 500 minutes a month for $15 plan, with a dedicated fax line for$10 more. This is phone and fax for half of what I was paying Qwest for one plain vanilla line, and I have to have cable Internet anyway for my work.

Another thing I like about it is that I can check my messages on line. They send me an e-mail when I have a voicemail message, and if I'm away from home, I can listen to a sound file that sounds clearer than most answering machines.

Still, when I need a cell phone, I really need one, such as when I was trapped in airport hell last November and had to call all around the country. I have T-Mobile, and it seems to work just fine wherever I've been. The only problem is that if you run out of minutes, it won't charge you automatically--it will just cut off your call, which is pretty disconcerting.

Still, it's pretty easy to refresh your minutes, and you can buy the cards at convenience stores and gas stations or do it by phone or on line.

It takes me FOREVER to use up $25. Once you've bought a cumulative $100 worth of minutes, any further minutes you buy are valid for 12 months, so it's good for us people of few words. :-)

use. I got the cheapest model, on sale at Target for $14.95; comes with 20 free minutes. It's been over a month, and only right now (down to 8 minutes) do I need to add more minutes. That's very easy, it can be done online, or at many stores.

I dont chat on the phone much so its really cheap buying a $20 charge up card ever 2 months.

You get voice mail, caller id, long distance included. I heard once that they use the Sprint network. My parents travel a lot in an RV and it works for them all over the place except Northern Wisconsin.

I maintain a cell phone mainly for emergency use. But it is convenient for casual calling.
Every 60 days a $20.00 "top up" keeps a fat stack of minutes available.
The by the minute rate is a little higher than a contract phone.
But it serves me well. I recommend it.

And any higher speed would be mitigated by ambient activity by other people on the same segment (never mind making it slightly easier for somebody local to find and infiltrate me.) Dedicated speed is a plus.

I opted to stick with DSL. (7mbps theoretical plus a land line for when my cell phone is powered off or recharging, though Qwest claims I could ditch my land line if I wanted...)

But I thought your idea too. But losing the cell phone is another reason not to ditch the land line.

I live in a bedroom community which means most people are gone until after 5 PM. If I want the speed, I can do my downloads during work hours.

Every 3 months you need to add at least $20.00 worth of minutes to your phone. Besides the cost of the phone, it costs at least $80.00 a year. If you don't use the minutes, they roll over, but you must always purchase minutes every 3 months. The per minute charge is rather high, but if you only need the phone for brief conversations or in the case of an emergency, I think it is worth it.

10c a minute, period end of subject for all local and CONUS long distance calls and texts. Minutes purchased in $10 increments, either online, card purchase (hard to find those cards at convenience stores) or at a phone kiosk/provider.
Upload and download are a bit more, as well as international/411 calls, but the price there isn't too bad. They also have a hybrid month to month contract (with credit check) that's very nice. The only problem is that their prepaid phones are programmed so that all you can use them is for the Amp'd prepaid plan. Their carrier is Verison.

The phones are a limited in selection and bit pricey (3 Kyocera and 1 Motorola razor)as they're all camera phone/mp-3 players/SD-flash memory devices, but you can upload and download files at your computer via USB without having to pay for the process, unlike with some other phones; the phone will show up as a memory device. You just can't upload or download through I-tunes. Look for the rebates; we got a Kyocera Jet slide phone for $75 after the $100 rebate.
You can also buy SD-flash memory upgrades at any electronic parts stores.


Haele

I live way out in the sticks and I have never taken it anywhere it didn't work.
It saves me a significant amount of money each month, since I rarely use the phone. Never did like talking on the phone much anyway.

As a rough guess, my phone costs have dropped from $50 to $10.