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Over the life of a cell phone, the
cell
phone plan will cost much more than the phone itself-
especially if the phone is free, after rebates and credits.
Thus, the best way to control your mobile phone costs is to
choose the most cost-effective cell phone plan from a
carrier with good coverage in your area. Aggressive
competition for subscribers among the service providers,
also know as "carriers," has driven the monthly and
per-minute costs of wireless calling down dramatically and
made even some of the newest cell phones, packed with
cutting-edge features, unprecedented bargains. And the new
ability for subscribers to keep their phone numbers when
they switch carriers has only heightened the competition.
Because of this more and more people are cutting the cord
altogether and making their cell phone their only phone.
Calling Plan
Explained
Phone Bill Explained
Calling Plan Basics
Explained
If you choose the right calling plan, your cell phone
shouldn't cost you much more than your home phone. But the
myriad choices and complexity in rate plans can make
comparing and choosing among them a challenge.
There are two key differences that make cell phone calling
plans more complicated than your home phone. One is that
cell phone users pay for both incoming as well as outgoing
calls, making it somewhat harder to estimate and control
your usage. The other is obvious: cell phones are mobile,
allowing you to use them from a virtually infinite number of
places, rather than the fixed location of your home or
office phone.
Thus, in addition to the traditional variables in your phone
bill -- how much time you talk, what time of day you talk
and across how long a distance do you talk -- where you are
when you talk on the phone can also affect your cell phone
bill.
Cell Phone Bill
Explained
Here are the primary components of a cell phone bill.
Estimating your average usage, or in some cases maximum
likely usage, in each of these categories will help you
choose the most cost-efficient calling plan for you.
Talk Time
Peak Minutes
Off-Peak
Roaming
Long Distance
Additional Talk time
Mobile-to-Mobile Minutes
Data Services
Talk Time, or "air time," is the total amount of time you
spend talking on the cell phone, whether you made or
received the call. Most calling plans include a specified
allotment of talk time, divided between peak and off-peak
portions, during your monthly billing cycle- all for a flat
monthly fee. Any talk time over this amount will cost you
extra, typically at a much higher per-minute rate.
Peak Minutes, also know as "anytime" or "whenever" minutes,
are the minutes of talk time used during the prime calling
time when the cellular networks are the busiest, typically
between 6am and 9pm Monday through Friday. These are the
most expensive minutes for using your cell phone, so the
more of these included in a calling plan, the higher the
monthly fee.
Off-Peak Minutes, more commonly called "Night & Weekend"
minutes, are the least expensive, often included in generous
quantities (frequently unlimited), even in many inexpensive
calling plans. Subscribers who expect to use their cell
phone frequently late at night and on weekends should make
sure to choose a calling plan with a plentiful allowance of
Night & Weekend minutes.
Roaming takes place when you use your cell phone outside
your home calling area or your service provider's coverage
area. Roaming agreements between carriers, along with
circuitry and software built into most cell phones, lets you
use your phone over a much wider area than your service
provider's cellular network, but you often pay much higher
rates for using this capability. Unless a calling plan
specifically offers no roaming charges, this airtime is
usually the most expensive. International roaming is
possible with some cell phones, but can be even more costly.
Frequent travelers should look for calling plans that
include no roaming charges.
Long Distance, as with your home or office phone, are the
calls to numbers outside your local area codes. Long
distance calling can be more expensive, per-minute, on a
cell phone than on a conventional phone, unless your calling
plan specifically offers free long distance. All carriers
off some type of single-rate or "national" rate plans that
typically don't charge extra for long distance and are best
for people who frequently make lots of long distance calls.
Additional Talk Time, or Additional Minutes, is the amount
of time you talk that exceeds your monthly allocation of
airtime, either peak or off-peak. This extra talk time,
after roaming, is the most common cause of unexpectedly high
phone bills.
Mobile-to-Mobile Minutes are those you spend talking to
another cell phone user operating on your carrier's network
and, when included in a calling plan, don't count against
your allotment of peak or off-peak talk time. These come in
handy when friends or family have cell phones from the same
provider, effectively making most calls to friends and
family free.
Data Services Explained: text messaging, Web/Internet access
and others are among the extras, over and above phone calls,
that typically carry an additional charge, either separately
or bundled together in a package. Unlike voice calls, which
tend to be packaged in similar ways by most carriers, data
services come in many forms -- down loadable ringtones and
screen graphics, photo-sharing services, email like
text-messages sent from cell phone to cell phone, the
ability to access Web pages from your cell phone and many
more. They are packaged and priced in many different ways:
from per-message charges for text messaging to bulk charges
per megabyte for all "data" transmitted to and from your
cell phone to all-inclusive, unlimited data plans for a flat
monthly fee. Most of these services require a separate
subscription or are accessible from a dedicated Web site
that spells out the costs and estimates, for example, how
many digital photos downloaded to your cell phone equals one
megabyte of data.
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