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| The Basics | Get the best deal on cell-phone service
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It's a jungle out there -- simply a quagmire of competing wireless phone plans. But you can save plenty if you assess your needs before wading through the deals. Here's how.
By Jennifer Mulrean
Finding the right wireless phone plan is no easy task. Competing carriers, features, prices, incompatible phone technologies and rebates all serve to confuse the wireless phone shopper.
Instead of the simple pricing model used by Internet service providers, where one monthly fee provides unlimited usage time, companies selling wireless phone service use computers to design pricing plans intended to extract the maximum number of dollars from every customer -- and drive them insane in the process.
Is there a way to make this any easier?
Start by figuring out how you'll use your wireless phone. Whatever category you fall into below, finding the plan before you find the phone is probably the easier way to go. (This assumes, of course, that you're motivated by cost and not the latest faceplate colors.)
Emergency user
You likely imagine your phone will rarely see the light of day, probably only when it's pulled from your car's glove box to call a needed tow truck. Your calling area may fall within a fairly narrow and predictable corridor, and you're not interested in using the phone for long distance. The trick for you is to find a low-cost plan that will perform when you're in a crunch. Here are your options:
Prepaid plans. You might think "prepaid" means paying upfront for a number of minutes and having as long as you want to use them. Not so. Most of these plans' minutes actually expire after two to three months, when you have to buy more if you still want this as your emergency solution. You'll also have to shell out for a phone and activation charges.
It's worth doing the math to see whether the plans you find are a better deal than a regular low-cost plan that bills you monthly, but chances are good they will be. For example, the $25 local AT&T Free2Go Wireless calling card included 71 anytime minutes, which works out to a per-minute charge of 35 cents. You have 90 days, or almost three months, to use the minutes, so the monthly cost is roughly $8.30, excluding your phone cost and activation charges. One prepaid option from TracFone offers 100 anytime minutes that are good for a year, but it costs $100 or $1 a minute.
Low-cost monthly plan. If your definition of "emergency" includes late-for-dinner calls and an occasional chat with a friend, a low-cost plan may be more useful than the prepaid plans above. Your monthly bill may be higher, but the per-minute cost may actually be lower, depending on your usage and the plan you find. A quick search on LetsTalk turned up a VoiceStream Wireless plan including 60 anytime minutes and an additional 500 weekend and long-distance minutes for $19.99 a month -- obviously the better deal if you need this kind of time. If you're not really using those weekend minutes and you're chatting primarily during peak hours when your 60 anytime minutes apply, the per-minute cost is 33 cents. Additional anytime minutes will cost you 40 cents each. This isn't much better than the prepaid plan above, and you're committed to that $20 bill every month for a year. Obviously, the fewer minutes you use each month, the more you should consider the prepaid option. Using only 50 anytime minutes a month and no weekend minutes means you're paying 40 cents a minute with this plan.
Disposable phones. You knew it was only a matter of time, right? Ease of use and flexibility rule the here-today, gone-tomorrow and buy-me-another-the-day-after consumer culture. Why hassle with plans that require a year's commitment and your first-born child when you can use a phone and then chuck it? That's not far off -- the first disposable models are due in stores this December and are made by Hop-On Communications. These gadgets are also in the pipeline: a credit-card sized model from Diceland Technologies, called the phone-card-phone, and one from Telespree Communications where you reuse the phone and replace the battery. These aren't on the market yet. You'll pay about $30 for the Hop-On phone, which includes 60 minutes of outgoing call time. At 50 cents a minute, and with no incoming call capability, this is a true emergency phone solution. But you don't pay extra for long-distance, and there's no pricey phone to buy and no activation charges, making this a better solution for many callers than the prepaid phones.
Your average daily dialer
The average monthly wireless phone bill in 2000 was just over $45, according to an industry report by the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA). Certainly, the incremental cost of jumping from the ultra-low monthly fee bracket to a mid-range plan isn't great. Just paying 50% more -- $29.99 a month vs. $19.99 with the plan cited above -- often gets you twice the minutes or more. You can search and compare plans on sites such as MSN eShop, Point.com and LetsTalk.
Besides watching the per-minute costs, you'll want to consider the nature of your calls -- how much long-distance do you really need? How does the plan define where roaming charges apply? These can be considerably more expensive than your normal plan rates (think 60 cents a minute and up) so check that coverage map. If you see that you'll often be incurring roaming charges, it might be worth paying more for a plan that eliminates these charges, such as AT&T's Digital One Rate Plan. At the time of this writing it offered 450 anytime, anywhere minutes for $60.
Another thing to consider if you'll often be traveling with your phone: Does it have both analog and digital capability? Digital is great for most urban areas, but a digital-only service might leave you stranded in the country.
Are the bulk of your minutes spent calling other family members? If so, a number of service providers offer "family plans" that allow family members to share minutes on one account. Watch the language here: unlimited minutes between linked phones doesn't mean you won't pay extra for each phone on the plan. Verizon Wireless' Family SharePlan, for example, charges $20 a month for each phone in addition to the primary subscriber.
Heavy user
You know who you are by the way your phone has permanently attached itself to your head. You take it everywhere you go and expect a variety of features, as well as lots of minutes for the best price. At MSN's Mobile Marketplace, you can screen your search results according to monthly fee, carrier or number of minutes. Heavy users will likely want to screen by minutes first and then sort those results by price. While this does a good job of narrowing your choices, you'll still have to click through to each offer to get more detail. You can make side-by-side comparisons using Point.com's "Help me find my plan" wizard. If you already have wireless service, you can enter your plan's information (cost and minutes, additional features) into its cost-comparison wizard and compare it to other locally available plans.
One benefit of being at the upper level of service plans is these are more apt to offer promotional "free phone" offers for signing up. Check the site Free-cell-phone-shopper.com to sift through current promotional offers. Heavy users also stand a good chance of getting the best values on a per-minute cost basis. Compare the 9 cents per-minute cost for AT&T's Regional Advantage plan with 1,600 anytime minutes for $150 with the 33 cents per-minute costs of its $19.99 starter plan (60 anytime minutes).
Datahead
Dataheads cross the spectrum of usage levels. Luckily, features such as text messaging, e-mail and stock alerts are available on low- and mid-range plans as well. The difference is, with lower-cost plans you'll usually pay additional fees, whereas these services may be included in the bigger plans' monthly costs. But be sure to check the fine print. Though a plan may advertise that two-way text messaging is included, for example, outgoing text messages often come with a per-message fee of a nickel or more. Some plans also offer the option of paying an additional lump sum up-front for up to 100 outgoing text messages.
Bottom line? Unlike Internet access, cable television and local telephone service, the one-price fits all model doesn't apply, so heavy users wind up paying heavily for wireless phone service. A realistic view of your own usage needs can help you to save big bucks.
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