A study is about to be released that says consumers are paying a hell of a lot more than they need to for cellphone access. The average person in San Diego—let’s assume the data can be extrapolated to the rest of the country—pays $3.02 per minute for cellphone service; removing outliers from the equation—people who pay for a ton of minutes but only use a few of them—and the figure drops to between $0.50-$1.00 per minute.
Nobody wants to pay $0.50 per minute, let alone $3.00, just to be able to talk to their dumb friends. “No, dumb friend of mine, I can’t believe Jack got married to Sawyer last night.” But it’s not like the cellphone companies are being evil or anything: AT&T says it “encourage[s] people to look at their bill, question their bill, and call us if they see anything that’s not right” Verizon Wireless says that if you’re not happy with your plan they’ll “work with you to get you on the right plan.”
In other words, make sure you buy the appropriate plan. For me, theoretically, that’d be the 450-minutes-per-month AT&T plan, seeing as though I don’t talk on the phone all that much.
The people who put together the report, Utility Consumers’ Action Network, which I probably should have mentioned several paragraphs ago, have suggested that the Feds mandate a little box on everyone’s cellphone bill that says, plainly, “You pay X-Amount per minute.” That would go a long way toward clearing up all that cellphone confusion, right?
You know what this means? Prices will drop soon enough.
We’ve started seeing some of those unlimited data/voice plans, and that’s just the start in my opinion. At some point, those prices will fall, and/or we’ll get a cheaper unlimited data plan for wireless use, at which point some kind of VOIP software would do the trick. Think an independent Skype wireless phone.
Also, I’d say that this is very common. People probably don’t need much, but if your consumption is limited, you’ll think about it too much and that isn’t enjoyable. In the ISP/datacenter businesses, they routinely oversell what they actually have because most people won’t use it. Example – they have 1GB of space, but sell it ten times, because most people use very little. The same thing applies to bandwidth – have 10mbps, sell it 10 times, because most people won’t even use 1mbps.
I think it’s going to follow a trend like the datacenter businesses and we’ll see prices fall. The biggest difference obviously is that there are fewer wireless carriers and so it would take another competitor or two, maybe someone like Clearwire.
Really now, i kinda thought of this all the time but didn’t have any proof to back it up
Prices will drop very soon, as cell phone access is overpriced (remember Sprint’s unlimited plan for $100 a month; I don’t consider that cheap unless i’m on the phone a heck of a LOT, as in I LIVE on the phone).
It’s tough to accurately determine how much per minute you’re paying, specifically with cell phones. Does that factor in the Unlimited Nights and Weekends, or the unlimited Mobile 2 Mobile that pretty much all of the carriers now offer? I mean, I’m on the 450 plan with AT&T, have been for years, but with Rollover and the aforementioned features, I could talk all month long if I needed to and never go over my minutes.
Be very, very careful with the roll-over minutes. The whole game is rigged AGAINST you. My wife and I had two months of heavy phone use and we blew through the rollover minutes in month one and then got jackhammered in the doo-doo hole in month two. There is nothing worse than getting a bill that is $600 over the massive bill you were already expecting.
If this should happen to you, and I hope it never does, the ATT rep will offer you some relief from your screwed sideways situation. You will be allowed to get some relief from the massive bill by upping your account to a higher rate plan provided you stay on the higher rate plan for no less than 6 months.
So, for two months of excessive gabbing you wind up with six months of a higher bill in order to pay down a portion of your pound of flesh payment.
I second the rollover minutes caution. It’s funny how AT&T won’t let customers set up an alert to tell them when they are getting close to your limit. I got stung by going over my minutes last year. Now, I log in to check them every week.