Cutting another bond
Posted on May 29, 2008 - Filed Under Personal |
The Problem
I’m paying 18 cents/minute on my cell phone plan. Isn’t that something.
Let me state something for the record: I hate cell phones. Having the table next to me at a restaurant erupt in cell phone chatter makes me want to dump hot coffee on those people’s heads.
Also why can’t a cellphone just be a cellphone? Why MUST I choose between the 1, 2, or 3 mega-pixel camera? So I can take a photo of my inner ear while chatting away?
My Verizon plan is charging $60 for 900 minutes. This would probably be a good deal if I used all 900 minutes. To be honest, I can’t think of that much to say. Analyzing my usage, I’m just under 300 minutes per month. For some reason I can’t help but to feel that Verizon is getting the better end of this deal.
The Solution
As an experiment I’m switching fulltime to Skype. For the past year Skype has been my primary form of communication across the pond. The video/sound quality is quite good. This use to require the other party to have Skype as well.
A few months back Skype released a few new packages which allows unlimited calls to landlines and cell phones. For a whopping $3/month a customer can now chat endlessly. OK so technically it’s not an unlimited number of minutes. The ceiling is 10,000 minutes. Or 165 hours. The French have a saying for someone who talks that much: “Shut the heck up!”
I know what you’re thinking. ”Yeah but Clifford what happens if you’re driving in the middle of Antartica and the Chupacabra jumps in front of your car?”
Virgin Mobile has got a great “pay as you go” plan which got top reviews from Consumer Reports. For $20/month, 200 minutes drops into my account and what isn’t used is rolled over to the next month. Total of 5,000 minutes can be banked.
The Analysis
Verizon requires a 2 year contract to avoid the $300 for a new cell phone. $60 per month over 24 months brings us to $1440.
Virgin Mobile and Skype is $23/month for a gabillion minutes. Over 24 months, the costs is $550. That’s around $890 which remains in my pocket. No contracts.
The real benefit is the ability to make phone calls, anywhere in the world with an internet connection. If in Papua New Guinea*, dialing my parents would be just as easy as if I was still in California. The difference is the medicine man of the Kombia tribe won’t kill me because my cell phone camera stole his soul.
* - Home to my favorite coffee
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3 Responses to “Cutting another bond”
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Ah, cellular communications… Do you think the idea derived from the Star Trek communicators pinned to the shirts of those first early explorers who boldly went where no one had gone before?
Regardless, I’ve long thought those companies were bleeding us technophiles dry. Of course there is much competition now, and I’ve recently seen one carrier (Sprint) who introduced what I thought would happen a few years back. A flat fee of $100 / month for unlimitted talk time. I’m not sure about the texting and image sending stuff, but I knew that eventually, one of the companies would have to go the way that land lines have and introduce a flat rate for everything.
Others will soon follow suit to compete, but in the meantime I’m still paying way too much to have my time interrupted by a chirping phone.
@Matt: I’m still waiting for the cell phone to appear in the watch.
Since posting this article, I’ve made a huge conversion to Skype and I’m stunned at the number of friends who are already on it. It’s quite cool!
I LOVE Skype. My dad is corporate pilot and ends up in random parts of the world without much notice. It makes it easy to keep up with him. I would go skeet shooting with my blackberry if my company didn’t have it implanted in my leg. It’s the mark of the beast.