Steve, I don't know anything about the pre-paid cell phones. Does that mean you get a new phone number every time you buy more minutes? What about the cell phone instrument itself? Keep the same one, get a new one? Are they speaker phones?
Somebody educate me on this. I'm paying $29.99 a month, plus all the taxes and regulatory fees for another $5.75 a month; i.e., total $35.74. That's for 250 daytime minutes and 3500 night and weekend minutes. Of course, no roaming, no long distance charges. But last month, I used a grand total of 21 minutes, which is probably at least double the average. In other words, I just don't use it much at all, but have it handy when I'm away from the house for emergencies. And for my wife to call to ask where I am and to tell me to pick up something at the grocery store on the way home.
I feel sure I'm paying too much for my use, but in spite of everyone's complaints about AT&T, my old Motorola cell phone works just fine everywhere I've tried to use it.
Different companies will have different rules for prepaid, so you kind of have to watch it, but if you don't make many calls, prepaid is the way to go. You get a phone, and a number. You prepay for lets say $25, $50 or so, whatever increment you want. Normally a call cost, say 10cent or 20cent a minute, check the plan.
this gets decremented from the amount that you prepaid. once you run out of money, you prepay some more to get more time. To get more time you can buy a prepaid card worth the dollar amount, activate it and it gets put on your account. most providers also let you prepay online with a credit card, or by simply calling them and giving them a credit card to add time. you keep the same phone and phone number, but the phones are generally very inexpensive, so you can go buy a new one if you want, and get a new phone number, or just keep the one you have.
Some of the things to watch out for: most will only keep your money active for a preset time limit. you buy a phone and get $25 worth of calls, it might only be good for a month, or maybe 3 months, and you lose whatever you don't use. My wife uses ATT prepaid, if you buy $100 at a time, it is good for a year. If you buy less, it expires sooner. If you don't use a phone much, $100 for a year isn't that bad, it's better than the postpaid plans what are $30+ a month. If you have a phone that ran out of money, and you don't renew with more time within a certain time, the phone number will not be good after awhile. they can't keep numbers tied up forever for people that don't renew, the numbers will get reused eventually once you stop using it.
Most of the prepaid are GSM based (ATT, Tmobile), which uses a sim card which contains the phone number and phone identity. You can actually use it in different physical phones (if the phone is unlocked, meaning it is not tied to a particular network, such as ATT). While the prepaid phones are offered with cheap phones, you can buy a really nice unlocked phone, buy a cheap phone for the sim card, and put the sim card in the really nice phone, and have a really nice prepaid phone. some companies like Att will let you buy the sim card without a phone, but usually it is cheaper to buy the sim with a cheap phone then to buy the sim alone.
When traveling overseas, a prepaid phone is the best to call home, etc. It's the cheapest way, much cheaper than calling cards and using hotel phones. Overseas are almost 100% GSM based systems (The USA is catching on, except for Sprint), but they use different frequencies than the USA GSM uses. If your GSM phone is a Quad band, it can be used any where in the world. If it's a cheaper one from the US, it probably won't work overseas. the opposite is also true, a cheaper one bought overseas won't work in the US. I have a Tmobile one that is a quad band, overseas I can just buy a sim and have a local overseas number.
Clear as mud by now? lol PM me if you have any questions. think a prepaid is the best for you, and ATT has a good prepaid plan.
