How to choose a wireless phone plan?
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The Wireless Report posted an Apples-to-Apples Comparison of the top four U.S. carriers in an attempt to show what an average user can expect to pay for service.
They specified certain plan details as a minimum to try to keep the comparison fair, and--in the end--the prices per month varied from US$50.97 (T-Mobile) to $63.99 (Sprint Nextel).
For those who have become confused and bewildered before when attempting to compare wireless and calling plans from several companies, we would like to help a bit by giving you a real-world, typical-scenario comparison of the “big four” wireless companies in the U.S.
In this feature, we will compare, as apples-to-apples as we can, an example of what an individual customer (you) could use to compare when shopping around for a post-paid (monthly) wireless plan.
Of course, there are several dozen other variables that some folks consider, like “family” – or pooled – plans, availability of certain phone handsets from some carriers (like the ultra-popular Motorola RAZR V3), and other less-obvious factors such as laptop/tethered wireless data access for business users, specific coverage differences, specific features on certain phone models, detailed technical service differences, etc. In the effort of simplicity, we will be focusing on this typical customer scenario:
Customer need: an individual, regularly-available calling plan with these details:We will assume coverage is advertised as available in the customer’s area for home and work- 400 to 600 anytime weekday minutes and unlimited/free night airtime minutes (after 9pm) and weekend airtime minutes
- Nationwide toll-free calling and national roaming included (whether in or out of home network)
- 200 to 500 text messages per month (not including MMS, video and picture messages, unless applicable)
- Wireless handset-only internet access with at least 2 megabytes of data traffic per month (we’ll dispense with all the acronym jargon such as WAP, WML, xHTML, EV-DO, EDGE, etc.)
- Voicemail, Call Waiting, Caller ID (typically free with any wireless plan)
- That’s it! For a normal customer, this is a typical calling plan need most likely. The above example could be described by a customer as this: “I need about 500 minutes and free nights and weekends, a few hundred text messages, national toll-free calling and roaming, and the ability to check my email from my phone a few times a day, and maybe I’ll buy some ringtones and games occasionally”.
For the rest of the report, see here.
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