Maybe you are unwilling to commit to a lengthy cell phone contract because they require a credit check, or because you don’t want to remain stuck with a cell phone carrier for a long period of time. Prepaid phone plans allow you to bypass all this and can give you much more freedom. They offer many advantages, such as:

1. No commitment

When you opt into a prepaid plan, you are not bound by a contract. You can terminate your subscription at any time by simply stopping to add time to your cell phone. This is a big advantage for users who want to try a new service provider without getting a contract.

2. No credit issue

If your credit isn’t exactly commendable or if you prefer to keep that information personal, you can have a hard time getting into an extended cell phone contract with a major carrier. Prepaid plans can be good alternative since pay as you go plans do not require a credit check.

3. Carryover minutes

Most pay as you go plans allow you to keep your leftover minutes at the end of the month. This is a big advantage if you use your cell phone only once in a while as you can accumulate a large amount of minutes for when you really need them. Note that most providers will ask that you add a minimum amount of money to your phone each month in order for your minutes to carry over to the next month.

4. Help establish your needs

Getting into a contract is a delicate matter if you are buying your first cellular phone because you don’t really know how much time you will spend talking on your phone each month. A pay as you go plan can help you evaluate how many minutes you need each month before having to sign a contract. Once you have established your needs, you can always call your carrier and get the contract that will best suit you.

5. No monthly fees

There are no mandatory monthly fees with a prepaid phone plan. Some carriers will charge you a small amount every month such as a 911 fee, but if you leave your cell phone empty and don’t use it, you don’t have to pay it. Be aware that some carriers may deactivate your phone if you don’t use it for an extended period of time.

6. Teach children and teens how to manage their time

If your children or teenagers bust their time limits with a regular plan, the overtime minutes will be automatically charged to your cell phone bill. If however you give them pay as you go cell phones and a time card every month, they will learn how to manage their talk time effectively and be more aware of how much mobile phones cost to operate because the phone will simply stop working if they run out of time.

Since they don’t require a commitment on your part, pay as you go cell phone plans are perfect for that “emergency phone” you keep in the car. You can truly benefit from prepaid plans if you take the time to evaluate your needs correctly. Pick your carrier carefully, and if you are not satisfied, you are always free to switch to a new carrier at a later time.

If you are shopping for a new phone, have a look at these cheap prepaid cell phones:

• Motorola W376 Prepaid Phone with Double Minutes for Life (Tracfone)
• Motorola Renew W233 Prepaid Phone, Green (T-Mobile)
• Nokia 1661 Prepaid Phone, Black (T-Mobile)
• Samsung t349 Prepaid Phone, Silver/Lime (T-Mobile)
• Samsung Shift a177 Prepaid GoPhone (AT&T) with $15 Airtime Credit

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You are probably loosing money as we speak.  Right now, you are being overcharged for something you are overusing or might not even be using. This could very well be the case if you have not looked at your cell phone bill recently. Do you want to know how you can save on your cell phone bill? Read on, the following tips could help you.

1. Consider a prepaid cell phone plan. No surprise and no worries. You don’t need to sign up for a long-term contract and you pay a fixed amount per month to keep your cell phone in good babbling order.

2. Get a contract. Wait – didn’t I just say to consider a prepaid plan? Yes, I did. Then why consider getting a contract? Because it all depends of how much you use your cell phone. If you talk on the cell a lot, getting a contract is one of the best money saver move you can make. As long as you respect the following point, that is.

3. Know your real cell phone usage. Monitor your minutes, your text messages and your data usage closely. More likely than not, you’re either busting your limit every month or are so much under your limit that you can move down to a cheaper cell phone plan.

4. Periodically check for promotions. The telecommunication industry is changing very fast, giving birth to new cell phone plans and promotions every month. Even if you’re satisfied with your current plan, you could save money on your cell phone bill if you check for promotion periodically.

5. Get rid of unnecessary services. Stop downloading overpriced ringtones, unsubscribe from the services that tap into your SMS budget by sending you unsolicited text messages and cut down on your data plan if you don’t use it that much.

6. Bundle services. If your cell phone carriers offer cable TV, residential land lines and whatnot, you can bundle your services together and ultimately save on your cell phone bill.

7. Use consumer retention programs. Most cell phone carriers have a consumer retention programs. If another carrier is having a wonderful promotion on their cell phone plans, call your current carrier and tell them about it. They might make you a better offer to keep you as a client.

It’s easy to save on your cell phone bill if you stop to think about it. How do you save on your cell phone bill? Have you monitored your cell phone usage recently? Have you ever made use of a consumer retention program? Share with the rest of the universe in the comments below.

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Whether you’re shopping for your first cell phone or renewing a cell phone contract, finding the best cell phone plan can be a bit overwhelming.

There are so many carriers to choose from and so many plans available (and I’m not even considering custom cell phone plans), it’s important to take some time to think about it. Hopefully this article will help you pick the best cell phone plan.

What is the best cell phone plan?

The best cell phone plan is the one that perfectly fits your needs and thus the first and most important thing to consider when shopping for a cell phone plan is YOURSELF. You need to connect to your real needs, not your publicity-induced buy-this-cell-phone-now-and-make-lots-of-friends needs.

If you can evaluate your needs in an objective manner, you can be assured to find the best cell phone plan. In order to do this, put the following points into consideration:

• Why are you looking for a new cell phone plan?

If it is not your first plan and are considering a change, it is probably because your current plan isn’t the best cell phone plan for you. Are you busting your minute limit every month? Do you need to make more long distance calls? Are you looking into a data plan to access the internet? Or maybe you realized you don’t need to pay for such an expensive plan.

If it’s your first plan, what are you hoping to achieve by getting a cell phone? What will be its primary purpose?

• How many daytime minutes do you need?

Do you really speak on your cell phone a lot during the day? Maybe you can get away with a plan that offers you only 150 minutes during the day per month but has unlimited nights and weekends as it would save you a lot of money. Try to estimate the number of minutes you are going to spend talking on your cell phone during the day.

• Do you need unlimited nights and weekends?

If you use your cell phone for business, maybe you don’t really need unlimited nights and weekends as you are going to spend most of your cell phone minutes during daytime – maybe you’d be better off with a cell phone plan that gives you 1500 minutes to use anytime.

If you use your cell phone for personal use, it is most likely your will be using it a lot during nights and weekends. Again, try to estimate the number of minutes you are going to spend during nights and weekends.

• Long distance / roaming calls?

If you are traveling often or have friends and family living outside of your local zone, it might be interesting to research cell phone plans that have long distance minutes included to avoid expensive roaming fees or long distance call fees. How many minutes per month do you think you will spend roaming or in long distance calls? The best cell phone plan for you might have unlimited long distance calls in your region or nationwide.

• Do you need text messaging?

How often do you use text messaging? Do you receive and send text messages a lot? If so, it might be worthwhile to consider a cell phone plan with text messaging, especially with some carriers now charging for received text messages as well, whether they are solicited or not.

If you already have a cell phone, you can look at your previous SMS usage to find out if getting a plan that includes a number of text messages every month is worth it.

• Do you need a data plan?

Transferring data like ring tones and wallpapers from the internet can cost you a LOT of money if you don’t subscribe to a data plan. If you plan to transfer data from the internet a lot, browse the web or download a lot of games it is probably worth looking into a data plan.

If, however, you want to use the internet only to occasionally download a song, a new wallpaper or ring tone, you might want to investigate other ways to transfer these multimedia elements to your cell phone, like downloading them on your computer and transferring them to your cell phone afterward.

• What about family cell phone plans?

Some cell phone plans will allow you to have more than one handset linked to the plan. You then have a common pool of minutes that are shared between all the handsets. This can be a handy feature for a small family as it can save you a lot of money – adding another cell phone to a family plan can cost as little as 10$ per month.

If you think this could be applicable to your situation, you can try to determine the needs of your family as a whole in terms of talk time and features and see how much money it would save you.

• Contracts?

Cell phone plan contracts allow you to buy a cell phone for much cheaper than the standard retail price (and often the carrier will give you one for free). These contracts however can be very long (3 years is a long time to be shedding 75$ a month for).

It’s up to you to decide whether or not the best cell phone plan for you comes with a contract, but put into balance the amount of money you’ll be saving on your cell phone purchase versus the amount of money you’ll be forced to spend for the duration of the contract and ask yourself if it is really worth it.

• Prepaid phone plans?

What about prepaid phone plans? They are the best cell phone plans for an “emergency phone” and for people who aren’t planning on using their cell phone too much. They can be very cheap and some prepaid phone plans allow you to accumulate your unused time month after month. Also, they don’t require you to sign a contract and this is a major plus for some people.

Once you have established your basic cell phone needs, you can start shopping for a cell phone and a carrier. Take your time and do your research well and you will be a lot less likely to get caught in a plan you didn’t want! Hopefully by now you have a better understanding of what the best cell phone plan is for you.

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Are you curious about unlocked cell phones? This article will hopefully shed some light on this gray market if you plan on buying one. First of all, why do unlocked cell phones exist?

Carriers will usually offer you a great deal on mobile devices when you sign a 1 year or more service contract with them. They will lower the price of the handset by hundreds of dollars, and they even go as far as giving you the handset for free.

They are actually losing a lot of money when they make you such an offer, and they want to make sure you’re a profitable client. In order to prevent you from breaking your contract with them, they force you to remain with them by locking the new device you just bought.

This means you are not be able to use your handset with another carrier. Even when your contract has expired, your handset will remain locked and often you won’t have much choice but to buy a new one if you want to switch to another carrier.

When talking about unlocked cell phones, we are mostly talking about GSM phones, which use SIM cards to store all your contacts and client information. CDMA phones can be unlocked too, but this article will focus on the GSM variant.

What are unlocked cell phones?

Unlocked cell phones basically allow you to move from carrier to carrier without having to change your handset. With a GSM phone, you could theorically have two SIM cards from two different carriers and switch carriers simply by changing SIM cards. This, however, will only work with unlocked cell phones.

Why you would want to unlock you cell phone?

1. Changing carriers on the go. Say you travel abroad often – you could want to sign up with two carriers in order to reduce costs, saving yourself any roaming charges, without having to carry two handsets. You could simply switch the SIM cards in your unlocked cell phones when you’re in another country.

2. Selling your cell phone. Say you plan on changing your phone and want to sell your old one. You are limiting your choice of buyers immensely if they can’t choose the carrier they want. Cell phones, when bought elsewhere than from a cell phone carrier, are often sold unlocked.

3. The practice of locking phones is bad for the consumer. By doing so, the carriers force your to remain loyal to them and can charge you more for less. They are effectively trying to avoid competition with the other carriers.

A good compromise the carriers could put into place would be to keep the phone locked for the duration of the contract and offer to unlock it when the contract ends. This would however prevent the user who has to travel abroad from switching SIM cards for the duration of the contract, so this is not an ideal solution. Having unlocked cell phones allows you to choose what’s best for you.

4. Exclusive handsets. Often, some handsets are exclusive to a specific carrier, like the iPhone. At the moment, you can only use an iPhone with AT&T. By unlocking a cell phone, you can use it with any carrier.

There has been some controversy recently on unlocked iPhones, as most unlocked iPhones have been rendered useless by the latest software update, but the idea remains the same.

Dangers of unlocking a cell phone

1. Carrier specific features might not work. Some carriers have specific services built into the handset, such as music downloading and web browsing. These features might not work if you try using them with unlocked cell phones you did not buy from these carriers.

2. Unlocked cell phones could become non functional. The iPhone is a good example of this. In the past, Apple has released a software update which has made all unlocked iPhones unusable. This however happens only in rare circumstances.

3. Possible compatibility issues with foreign phones. There could potentially be some compatibility issues if you buy a phone from a foreign country, say somewhere in Asia, unlock it, and try to use it in your home country. Some features might not work properly because of differences in the cellular networks.

4. Some extra configuration might be required. In order to use some of the features like multimedia messaging and web browsing, you might have to configure your cell phone when switching to a new carrier.

How to unlock a cell phone

So, you’re considering unlocking your handset? There are many resources around the net which can help you achieve this. You can either:

Buy unlocked cell phones directly. By buying a handset that is already unlocked, you’re saving yourself the hassle of reprogramming your phone. This is not a big deal – if you plan on buying a new handsets and then unlock it, you should buy it unlocked in the first place. If you are interesting in buying unlocked cell phones, you might want to check the following popular models from Amazon:

Motorola RAZR V3 Black Phone (Unlocked)
LG KG800 Chocolate Black phone (Unlocked)
Nokia 6800 Cell Phone (Unlocked)
Sony Ericsson Z710i Twilight Black Phone (Unlocked)

Obtain an unlock code. You will usually find services around the net which will allow you to obtain an unlock code for your handset model. Some independent cell phone stores will also offer you to unlock your handset for a fee. You should keep the unlock code carefully in case your phone “relocks” itself – some carriers have been known to do this even when you did not buy the phone from them in the first place.

By locking cell phones, carriers are offering you a service at a higher cost and tend to develop less features since it makes the competition stagnate. By buying unlocked cell phones, you are also making a statement against this practice. What do you think about unlocked cell phones? Are they worth it? Share your comments with us below.

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It’s hard to resist signing a 3-year contract when you buy a new cell phone. Cell phone carriers give you such a fat discount on the phone when you buy it with a contract, yet getting out of a contract can cost you hundreds in early termination fees.

Chip Chick gives a tip on how to get out of your cell phone contract and avoid fees. It involves transferring your contract’s responsibility to someone else. Finding someone willing to take on your contract can be hard though, but these two services can help you find people who’ve been waiting for this occasion: Celltrade and CellSwapper.

Now you can worry less about your cell phone contract while still enjoying a huge discount on your new phone.

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If you need help monitoring your cell phone usage, or if you are tired of building up huge cell phone bills, this might be the service for you.

MinuteWatcher is a service that tracks your usage and sends you periodic warnings and forecasts. These give you a chance to adjust your mobile phone usage before you receive a nasty surprise on your phone bill the next month.

This service is FREE and is available to all the major US carriers.

Source: Cell phone minutes monitoring service

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After reading “Plan carefully to avoid cell phone troubles” (edit: sadly the article is no longer available online), I wanted to emphasize the fact that sell phone vendors will do everything they can to sell you extras and a contract.

When I bought my Razr V3c from Bell Mobility, the salesman tried to put me on a 3 years contract without even asking me. He just said “sign here for your contract”. My what? I don’t want to get involved in a contract. I don’t mind paying the phone 100-200$ more if I can save the hassle of a contract.

The salesman from still sold me a set of accessory, which I thought were free, and an extended warranty. Having dropped my phone on the ground thrice so far, I don’t mind the extended warranty – at this rate I will probably put it to good use next year. As for the accessories, I still needed them, but please be careful of what they will try to get you into when you buy your first cell phone, because you might end up regretting it!

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Why pay for both your phone line at home and your cellular phone? Why not keep just your cell phone? This is something I’m considering doing, and there is a good article on that subject over there: Should I ditch my land-based home phone?. Here are the pros and the cons of dropping your land-based phone line. Most are taken from the article, but I added a few on my own:

Pros:

1. Save money. This one is pretty obvious. Most cell plans have free long-distance plans, caller id and voicemail. Why pay for an extra phone line with additional fees for those options when you already have your cell phone.
2. Only one phone number. One number where you can always be reached. You don’t have to pay additional fees for redirection services.

Cons:

1. Must keep the phone charged. If you don’t you might miss important calls.
2. Less security. In the case of an emergency, 911 services cannot located you as easily.
3. Reception and quality issues. The voice quality in general on a cell phone is not very good when compared to land-based lines.
4. Need multiple cell phones if you don’t live alone. What about your wife and your kids? They’ll need cell phones too.

As for me, I live alone, I barely use my land phone line and most of my calls are long-distance calls. I will make the jump soon :)

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