Here’s the situation: the missus and I have two cell phones and two lines from Verizon. With taxes and local fees, we’re paying an average of $70/month for the service. I’m not sure if this is a good deal, a rip-off, or just average for cellular service, and I’m curious as to how other folks’ bills are like, so I ask the Dopers: what do you pay for your cell phone service?
What’s your carrier, how many lines, how many minutes, let’s hear what you’ve got…
VoiceStream. With taxes, about $75 a month for two lines. We have a family share plan where calls to each other, and to anyone else on the VoiceStream network, are free at any time of the day. Then we have 800 “anytime” minutes and unlimited weekend (not weekday evenings like some plans) hours. The weekend begins Friday at 7pm, I believe, and ends Sunday at midnight.
I pay $30 for AT&T’s national plan with 300 minutes and free nights/weekends. Here in Baltimore, the reception is excellent. I was really surprised when I first came here and saw full reception everywhere I went.
I think my brother pays $35 for the same plan but with 500 minutes. Yeah, 200 more minutes for five bucks more. Weird.
I’m on a Nextel plan with 10,000 minutes (something like 2000 anytime) and unlimited walkie talkie, for roughly 65 a month after taxes.
I have Voicestream’s lowest-cost national plan: 500 weekend minutes, 60 whenever minutes (that’s total per month, not per week) for $19.99. It’s fine for me since I don’t use it much during the week anyway and I use it to call long distance on the weekend, and have never yet used up the minutes there either.
I have considered upgrading one level to their $29.99 plan - 300 whenever minutes and unlimited weekend minutes. But I haven’t decided yet.
I have Sprint, and I pay about 55 a month for 500 anytime minutes, Unlimited sprint to sprint minutes, unlimited nights and weekends starting at 7pm, and internet access. The service is pretty good until you get out to the country, around richmond it works quite well.
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Expect rates to rise in the next year with the merging of Cingualar and AT&T Wireless. Technology is still getting cheaper, but the growing lack of competition will enable providers to raise their rates even as they continue to lower the technology costs…
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I pay 30 for 300 Anytime and unlimited night and weekend, pretty standard I think compared to everyone in this thread. Also have nationwide long distance.
As for the OP, it’s hard to tell if 70 for two lines is a ripoff or not without knowing the minutes involved. Doing a quick look at Cingular, you could get a two-line plan with 600 anytime minutes and 5000 night/weekend minutes to split for about 60 bucks (before taxes). How does yours compare to that?
Well, my wife and I don’t have a “shared” plan – we have two separate plans, each with 200 minutes general, 500 nights/weekends, and 1000 mobile-to-mobile, for the $70/month all together. We don’t use the phones too much; mostly it’s just quick calls to each other to coordinate things, no prolonged chitchats.
From the other posts so far, it seems like $30-$40 a month per line is the going average.
We have Verizon too. It is $44.00 per month for 400 anytime minutes with unlimited Nights and Weekends. They also include 1000 minutes to other Verizon customers during the month. Another line is $20.00 on a shared minute plan. Verizon gets the best reception in our area so I felt that was worth the extra cost because there are cheaper rates but reception is spotty.
T-Mobile here.
$39.95 for 600 anytime, unlimited N&W, free roaming, etc. etc.
That sounds a little high for a that amount of minutes. Most providers offer adding an extra line to plans for like 20 bucks, and if you bought like a 40-50 dollar plan to share, you’d probably each get a few more minutes.
That being said, it isn’t absurdly high, and if you use the mobile-to-mobile minutes a lot, it’s probably worth it. Could probably find a similar deal for about 10-15 bucks less, but rarely are new deals worth the cancellation fee, followed by a new two-year commitment.
Verizon Wireless, 400 anytime, unlimited N&W, includes long distance and most roaming: $52 per month.
Verizon doesn’t compete on price, it competes on reliability - a VZW customer who travels to a random part of the country is more likely to get service than (say) a Cingular or T-Mobile customer. If you don’t travel much, and another carrier has good coverage where you live, you might be better off switching.
(Actually, there are a couple other things you can get with VZW or Sprint but not with the TDMA/GSM carriers: high speed data and push-to-talk. But most people don’t need high speed data from a cell phone, and Nextel has better PTT.)
I used to work for Verizon so I have the employee deal…$29 per month for 400 nationwide anytime minutes, unlimited nights and weekends, and 1000 mobile to mobile.
When I still worked there we were given 400 nationwide minutes for free, but it really came out to unlimited nationwide minutes since nobody was ever held accountable for their overage charges.
T-Mobile family plan for 3 phones: 79.99 – that is 800 shared minutes, free weekends, and free T-Mobile - T-Mobile calling.
$3 for 500 send / receive text or multimedia messages for one phone.
$10 for 300 send / receive text messages and unlimited multimedia messages and data on another phone.
After taxes we come to about $100 per month.
Locally, I can’t beat it. T-Mobile has the best data plans available in my market, and almost all of our friends are on T-Mo, so we don’t use minutes when we call them. I love the data plan because of the HTML-compatible browser and PDF viewer on my phone mean I can read almost any webpage no matter where I am; I can also connect my phone to my laptop for unlimited wireless Internet access for only $10 a month.
Virginmobile customer here,
Nationwide long distance, email, caller I.D., (all the features of the “real” phones, and more), my plan is as follows:
.25 per minute for the first 10 minutes, .10 per minute after that, the day starts at 05:00.
My phone “bill” (I don’t get a bill) runs about $12.00 to $15.00 a month. I am on the Sprint PCS coverage area (PCS only!, no roaming) and I have used my phone for a couple of years now, coverage is very good (better than some “real” phones) as I have used my phone from Louisisana to California (as a matter of fact I am in Bugtussle, California now and my phone works great!).
unclviny
I pay £14 a month. I get 50 free text messeges and most of my calls are free.
Guess I should mention I get 100 free text messages. (That $52 includes $7 for the mobile web + 100 SMS package.)
The wife and I also use Virgin Mobile. The only thing we are required to pay is $20 every three months. Basically, it is prepaid minutes at the rate that Unclviny mentioned. Perfect setup for me as I only got a cell phone to be able to talk to/be reached by the wife or the kid’s school, (the only people that have the number) and this is a hell of a lot cheaper than a second home phone line and more reliable than my work’s voice mail, which occasionlly is three days late.
It astounds me that there are 1000 minutes/month plans out there simply because on average, I don’t think I spend 20 minutes a month talking on any phone. My wife and I rarely talk on our cells but use text messaging. We don’t even use up our $20 each three months so we are getting some big balances going and are now coming up with excuses for using the phones.
Perfect plan for people who for people who don’t like talking on the phone but want a cell phone for those occasional moments when they come in real handy.
Forgot to mention, whether I’m at home with neighbors in the house, or at work, I’ve noticed that many times people with the really expensive phones and big name plans can’t get a signal, to even make a call, yet I’m at high strength and perfect signal connection standing right next to them.
I found that to be very impressive about VM/Sprint.
Only bummer about it is that because it is Sprint, the super cool “light up” antennas and flashing keypads don’t work. But I guess constant signal is better than cool flashy lights.
I still wish I could have a bitchin antenna though.