So call me old fashioned and stationary. I don’t mind at all. I’m the kind of person that talks on a cell phone only when necessary. Instead I prefer a land line. That land line may be a softphone on my laptop or my Vonage service at home (I gave my POTS monopoly the boot a year ago and haven’t looked back), but I don’t like the sound quality of cell phones, getting distracted from my driving, or burning through expensive airtime minutes. I also want a phone to be simple, I don’t need a camera or crippled web browser or email client.
I use less than 60 minutes of airtime a month. Most of my cell calls are 2 minutes. I don’t need or want 500 minutes a month. And I balk at the idea of paying $40 or more a month for a service that I don’t maximize. But I did want a cell phone for the times I’m mobile.
A friend recommended Virgin Mobile to me and it has worked great. Just go to Target and buy one of their phones from the shelf or use Virgin’s web site if you are lazy. You can get a decent phone for $20, though I recommend that you research them on the net to see which one would work best for your needs. Take the phone out of the box at home, and get it activated through Virgin’s web site in about 20 minutes. I used the prepaid plan, and it costs me about $15 a month for my usage level. There is no contract. If I don’t like the service, I can cancel with no penalty. If I break my phone I can get a new one at the same price and transfer my service to it.
I use the prepaid by-the-minute plan. I pay for what I use, so I don’t need to worry about underrunning or overrunning my stock minutes. The prepaid system is easy, I set up Virgin with my credit card to automatically buy more minutes as I need them (auto top-up). So I don’t need to logon to their web site every month.
Virgin Mobile is an MVNO. They are basically riding on top of Sprint’s network. So you should have service anywhere Sprint has service.
If you don’t have high usage and don’t like the lock-in of traditional carriers, give Virgin Mobile a try.