Finding What Is The Best Prepaid Cell Phone Plan
Finding What is the Best Prepaid Cell Phone Plan
It's not really as simple as we would like to find out what is the best prepaid cell phone plan. This is because each service provider who offers you prepaid plans has its own way of packaging the plan and has its own way of offering you value. But there are a few things we can consider which will help us in finding what is the best prepaid cell phone plan.
Most notably, it makes sense to say that the best plans are those where minutes don't expire. Some services offered give you unlimited minutes, but these can expire even in as little as seven days. So you may pay $10 for 30 minutes airtime and get unlimited minutes on weekends or evenings, but this all expires after seven days even if you don't use your 30 minutes up. It may be a good deal if you're going to talk that much on your phone on weekends, but you're going to need to pay $10 after seven days, which means you would need to buy a top up card for about five times a month – equating to $40 to $50 a month.
Other networks offer you a number of plans on its network, such as T-Mobile which has four different pay-as-you-go plans.
You can go the basic route, where you just pay up for minutes you want to use on the network. Pricing here starts at $10 as well. Here you get 30 minutes airtime, no matter what time or day of the week, but your 30 minutes only expire after you've actually used them. If you're wanting a phone for quick calling and keeping in contact, this kind of plan makes perfect sense.
For $25 on T-Mobile, you can get 130 minutes; $50 gets you 400 minutes. So consider the first prepaid plan mentioned in this article – paying $50 a month for cards that expire after seven days, while you get unlimited weekend and night minutes, or paying $50 and getting about 6.6 hours of airtime. It may make sense to choose the latter, again depending on your habits.
However, T-Mobile also has pay-per-day plans, where you pay a dollar for the days you use the network. Here you do also pay per call, but you get unlimited night minutes or when you call from mobile phone to mobile (on the same network) phone.
It also offers a type of plan where you can get the same deal offered to contract customers, but on a prepaid plan, or a plan where you pay a dollar a day and then pay for unlimited minutes top-up refills, with more expensive refills including text messaging and web access.
Sprint Nextel offers similar types of plans. You can pay $50 a month upfront and get unlimited talk, unlimited text, unlimited access to the Internet and even unlimited walkie-talkie service. We can do a comparison at this point straight away. The first type of service mentioned in this article would cost you $50 a month if you bought a card every time after it expired (expiring in seven days). The second sees $50 a month get you 6.6 hours of straight airtime. But here you pay $50 a month and get unlimited talk time any time of the day! It appears that this may be the better deal.
Sprint also has a service where you pay one dollar a day and pay 10 cents a minute during the day, while receiving unlimited night and weekend minutes, mobile-to-mobile calling, unlimited text services and unlimited walkie-talkie services.
Sprint also has a pay-per-minute scenario which is a straight pay-as-you go option. So, hopefully this article gives you a good idea as to how you can work out what is the best prepaid cell phone plan.
