Help Me Pick a Plan / Phone

I've long been one of those people who hasn't used his phone enough to justify a month-by-month plan. I've been using Tracfone's prepaid service for around three years now. It's been enough. Until now. One month ago, I got back to school and since then I've burned through 440 of Tracfone's "units."

Let me explain what "units" are. With TracFone, you don't have minutes. The "unit" can be used for anything from talking to text messaging or Internet (though extremely limited and slow). Each minute of talk time costs one unit, each text message sent or received costs 0.3 units. While on TracFone's website (it's the only place you can go on your TracFone) the units scroll downward like a taxicab meter goes up. Each conversation costs 1.0 units at minimum even if you're on the phone for ten seconds. That's why I've taken to texting a lot; it's cheaper!

There aren't any roaming charges.

Now, my parents use AT&T, as does virtually everyone else I talk to/text. Thus, they are the first place I'm looking. Does anyone know if there are discounts of some kind that can be had for adding a cell phone plan to an existing AT&T account? Keep in mind family plans are out of the question! My dad is on a corporate plan, and my mom uses about ten minutes per month, no joke! She's on Tracfone too. The economics of it all dicatated up till now that I use TracFone unless I could find a cell phone carrier offering a free phone and $15/mo service. Obviously that's not happening. However, the last 800 units I loaded onto my Tracfone cost $100. I've used 440 of them in one month, which is roughly equivalent to $55/mo. I'm not sure if this usage pattern will continue, but I'm guessing there's no reason for it to change. Thus, I'm starting to look at monthly plans...

I don't talk much, so 450-1000 monthly minutes is fine. I don't need "unlimited" texting either; I'd say 1000 in/out is fine as long as there's something to tell me how many I have left (overage charges BLOW). Camera/MP3 is desirable but not required. I'm willing to mess with SIM cards etc so as to play the "get a plan with a free phone, then swap out the SIM into a better unit I got for next to nothing on eBay" game as well.

Thoughts?

ATT, you said everyone you know uses it. They don't charge you minutes if your calling other people who also use ATT.

$39/mo plan 450 min, + $5-20 texting plan.

Rollover minutes are nice, I don't come close to using my plan minutes, have 3100 rollover minutes saved up : / They need smaller cheaper plan options IMO.

Agreed on the wanting a smaller cheaper plan. All of the Big Four (AT&T, US Cellular, Verizon and T-Mobile) offer $39.99 as their cheapest plan. I will not use Sprint; a friend at work has it and the call quality sucks.

I like T-Moblie's My Fav plan. I use there cheapest one due to the fact I rarely call people that are not setup as my fav's. On top of that when I move out I will add the free at home calling for 10$. Its a good combo for about 50-60$ a month.

The main question is whats your budget/ how much youre willing to spend a month? I love the sprint simply everything plan, unlimited everything for $99/mo. You cant beat that, Also if you get a smartphone ie blackberry or treo or instinct, you can do whatever and not have to worry about usage.

What is your actual monthly bill for the $99 everything?
- with all access charges, taxes, bellybutton lint cleaning fee, etc.

I've been shopping & looks like $40 for 450 min. + $30 for data + $20 for text = $90 min!

sprint
450/unlim TXT - $50
900/unlim TXT - $70

450/unlim TXT/unlim DATA - $70

Figure $5-10 for fees and the rest.
If you know a sprint employee, the everything plus (new gen SERO) is a great deal.

If everybody you know is ATT, $40 gets you 450 minutes, 1500 TXTs is $15.

i';m going to get hte sprint sero plan again by adding a second line for my friend under my account. shouldn't be any issues with this right?

I'm looking heavily into AT&T, I'm trying to keep things at $50 or under. I don't need any data besides texting, and I don't use too many minutes per month (300-400 should be enough). When I get home, my parents are going to look into bundling my cell onto their AT&T landline.

I would recommend that you consider Skype, especially if you have decent Wi-fi on campus. Its around $60 a year for unlimited calling and your own number. Buy a wi-fi phone and keep it with you, they make ones as small as your average candybar phone, and you could use it anywhere you have a wi-fi connection. For when you're going to be off campus, keep your tracfone or better yet switch to T-mobile prepaid, 1000 minutes for $100 with no hidden fees and they don't expire for a year.

Maybe you have the money for full fledged service but I know as a college student myself, saving money is always good. Going with skype+prepaid is going to save me $900 a year once my contract is up.

I wish I could use the WiFi on my campus, but the security settings make connecting with anything less than a full fledged computer virtually impossible as far as I can tell (iPhones don't work, for example. You need to install special software to support the TTLS protocol).

As others have said, looks like a cheap AT&T plan is easily your best bet, if everyone you know also uses AT&T then you'll hardly ever burn any minutes (free mobile to mobile) and you'll be piling them up thru Rollover as well (stockpiled min. expire gradually after 12 months IIRC, so you do get some run out of them). Think the cheapest plan starts at 400-450 min.

An extra $10 a month over whatever that plan costs ($39+$10 no?) will get you like 400 text messages and 1MB of internet usage IIRC (it's what I've got for myself, under a family plan w/my sister). Which is kinda handy, if you're just using a cheap phone w/a WAP browser it's good enough for checking your e-mail on it once or twice a day w/o ever going over that 1MB limit. I think for $5 you get 200 messages and no web usage (though honestly it's like 1 cent per KB so it's not a big deal either way for light use on a cheap/WAP phone).

Any half decent phone should have a text message counter you can reset on a monthly basis to keep tabs on it so you never go over your limit too...

As for the actual phone...

Personally I like my Sony Ericsson W580i slider a lot, think it's going for free pretty commonly w/a new contract. Very nice music player, beautiful screem, seems durable, I've dropped it like three or four times and it hasn't so much as gotten scratched, pretty easy to customize, decent camera and an okay browser. Though I hardly use it... I use the built-in Yahoo e-mail app and the Gmail app I downloaded much more, and the IM app ocasionally (it's a Java app, part of AT&T's firmware, think AT&T actually charges each IM as a txt message for the purpose of your bill, rather than as web usage, though the phone counters won't reflect it).

It comes with the data cable (can sync w/PC etc.) and the audio/mic cable as well, and some cheap Sony in-ear headphones (my throw-away pair for the beach now, heh). I compared it to the other cheap phones AT&T had available when I got it (Samsung/Nokia) and it seemed to have the best battery life, which swayed me away from the Nokia 6555 as it's battery seems to be horrid. All three of my previous phones were Nokias with excellent battery life, but I can confirm that one's just bad in that regard, my sister has it. The W580i will easily go for 2-3 days on one charge if I'm not making too many calls, it should last everyone at 'least a full day or two, which still can't hold a candle to my older Nokias but it seems better than a lot of other phones these days.

Only sorta bummer was that it uses Sony's M2 (micro MemoryStick) cards instead of microSD which just about everyone else uses (and I already had a 2GB one)... That's one of the reasons I've never even considered a Sony camera. But I got a 4GB M2 card cheap enough off Amazon (was like $20) so meh... I think AT&T's now carrying another Sony Ericsson Walkman-branded phone as well, a sorta flip phone... But not really since the keypad isn't on the flip part? Just the music keys or something. W3xxx something, I dunno, looked kinda cheap when I saw it at a store, not sure what the point is since they're still offering both of 'em too. And the W750i flip phone which is similar to the W580i but w/3G and w/o some of the music-emphasis.

Personally, I still don't need a smartphone, I'd like one, but I defintiely don't need it... And the best one out there, the iPhone, still seems far too shackled in several areas. The basic calendar on most of these cheap phones is nice enough to handle daily reminders if you manage to tame their synching aps... They've all got several alarms and other niceties too. I'm looking forward to what the Android phones might bring to the table though. Someone's really gotta up the ante and bundle a browser that's at 'least halfway as elegant as Safari on the iPhone...

edit: Nevermind. I need to learn to read.

I found its a much better deal to use T-Mobile prepaid phones if you are going to use them a lot.

Past that I would try to get in on one of the Spring plans with unlimited text and data and ~500 monthly minutes. Also when (if) you go over on minutes with one of the plans, they have very reasonable rates instead of raping your wallet like some other carriers.

Personally I have a Sprint smartphone on the SERO plan (now dead) with unlimited text/data for $30 a month. I plan to keep this plan for a long time since I see nothing in the horizon that is going to beat it I used prepaid phones for ~5 years before this.

ocellaris said:

I found its a much better deal to use T-Mobile prepaid phones if you are going to use them a lot.

Click to expand...

The reason I suggested the T-mobile prepaid was mainly for the fact that they don't expire for a year if you buy 1000 at a shot and they don't have all kinds of arbitrary fees like some other providers.

I guess it all depends on how you will use the phone. If you're going to be making a majority of your calls from a dorm room to call home, or places where you can use the wi-fi for it, then 1000 mins will probably last a long time, especially if you use text messaging more often. If you're so mobile and social that you're going to be on the phone all over the place a lot, then a plan would make more sense.

If most people you know have ATT, get the cheapest plan they offer since the minutes to ATT landlines or cells wont count. I've used ATT for my cell provider for about 8 years now and love the service, and since ATT is the local telco, I use hardly any minutes at all.

They have a decent selection of phones, and the deals when you sign up or renew the contract are pretty good. I'm up for renewal and getting a Blackberry Curve for $100.

Now the question is whether I can obtain a bundle discount if my parents get AT&T cable and then put my cell plan on their plan (for which they would debit money from my bank account). We already have AT&T landline service.