Cell Phones

Bear with me for a short diversion.

Part of cleaning up our lives is also about minimizing expenses. This week, we consolidated our cell phone services.

Sue has had Verizon for a while now, but I've been on T-Mobile. I used to use a ton of minutes, and geared my cell plan towards that goal. But when I went in and looked at the actual minutes used, my recent activity was nowhere near what I am paying for.

My T-Mobile bill was set up for 5000 anytime minutes, with CDMA and WIFI Hotspots included. It was set up this way due to some $700.00 phone bills that I had a couple years ago. The problem is that I’ve been steadily using less and less of my minutes recently. So much so that it just no longer made sense to have access to that much time.

On top of all that, I have some pretty specialized uses for my cell phone. I use a lot of the internets and require a PocketPC or Palm based phone for regular access.

So, here are the steps that I followed:

1. Figure out what is important to have on the account (internet, minutes, etc.)
2. Determine the likely number of minutes.
3. Find the best plan possible.
4. Find and research the best phone possible.

Since Sue was already on Verizon, and we liked their coverage, the choice to consider them was very easy. The coverage was always better when we compared her phone with my T-Mobile coverage. There were very few times that I would have coverage and she would not. Most often, We would have to finish calls on her phone when they dropped out on mine. (can you hear me now ;-)

I also looked at the other contenders, but in the end, Verizon’s known entity won out.

Sue and I selected phones and ordered them for ASAP delivery. Within the next couple of days, our service is transferred and we’ve managed to save $70.00 a month between us. Throw in some extra features that I previously did not have like EVDO Dial Up Networking (through a hack) and a really great browser in the phone (Picsel) and I feel good that we have come out way ahead.

Here is what we ended up with:

Verizon Family plan 1400 minutes
Samsung i730 with unlimited EVDO and 1000 text messages. – This is a far better “Phone” than the hp 6315 that I had prior. I can actually use this one for making calls without explaining the echo and crappy signal to the other person on the line.
Sue’s Phone (for the life of me, I do not know what she chose)

My hope is that we don’t start overshooting our minutes unexpectedly, but I guess that is the risk you take.