Confused About Mobile Phone Plans

 
I am trying to find the best mobile (cellular) phone or wireless solution.

My blood relatives are within a 200 mile (360 km) radius, and I live less
than 2 miles from my job site.

My wife and daughter however are overseas, about 11,000 miles (17,000 km)
away.  I want to be able to dial from my mobile to either a mobile or
landline to the target country.

What bothers me is the widely varying per-minute rates on calls to the
country from the United States (note:  I don't want international
roaming...I don't care if my phone works when I travel to that
country...and it probably won't anyway, even with the promise of carriers)

Consider:

Recommended to me was a carrier called Metro PCS, which wants $0.05/min
from my mobile to any landline in the target country, and $0.24/min mobile-
to-mobile.  I don't know what individual plan I want.

T-Mobile, whose Get More 1000 Plus Promotional seems a fit for me, wants
$0.69 / minute to the target country.

Verizon wants $1.49/min under their "Standard International Dialing" but
$0.35/min if one pays $4 fixed a month under the "International LD Value
Plan."

I talked to a girl at customer service from Sprint-Nextel whose English
could have used a lot of improvement and who sounded like she was talking
from a can strung to a wire (can it be heard in New Dehli?), and she told
me at first that the rate was 2.49 / minute WITH a per month flat $4
international calling option, and $4.19/minute WITHOUT the plan.  I could
hardly believe what I heard, then went to the website and found out she did
not know what she was talking about:  there is a $4 fixed month to join an
international special plan, which costs $0.34/min with the plan (add
$0.12/min if made to a mobile) and $1.99/min without the plan ("standard").

I have not yet checked AT&T/Cingular yet.

The MetroPCS rates look quite attractive to me.

But as with anything:  what's the catch?

I know that MetroPCS is some kind of pre-pay rather than post-pay system---
still don't know how it works.

I am guessing that MetroPCS has lower rates, and a no-contract system
because of what?  Poor coverage?  Poor voice quality because they use the
Internet (packet-switched networks) instead of dedicated circuits (PSTN)?

Someone please tell me why wireless companies vary so much in terms of
plans and prices and quality.

 

Deliberate obfuscation.

When AT&T had a land-line monopoly, they would never give you their
various phone plans and rates written down on paper. They would rattle
them off over the phone, but they would never write them down for you.

Now with computer billing, phone companies can easily itemize charges that
vary by when, who, where, and how, knowing that most consumers won't
be able to decipher the total pricing structure to do meaningful comparisons.
They just quote the most attractive price per minute number, without working
thru the details of how different rates kick in to vary the total cost.

But that's what you have to do. Make a spreadsheet of how you are going
to use your phone. Vary the number of minutes per month from 1 to N
for each category of usage (local, mobile-to-mobile, international, etc).

Then calculate and plot the total cost vs. minutes for each plan and choose
the one that will best fit your usage.

You have to do this for yourself, because all the plans kick in different rates
at
different points.

Don

 
What about VoIP... do they have reliable internet access?

Buy a VoIP box and register it locally and then ship it to them.  Then
they can call you or you can call them and it's a "local" call.

-Eric

 Five By Five wrote:

Depends on which you use.

When I traveled to Taiwan, I took my Vonage box with me.  I plugged it
into the hotel ethernet port, plugged the hotel phone into the Vonage
box, and was then able to use the phone both sending and receiving calls
with no extra charges exactly as if I were sitting at home in New Mexico
- except that everybody at home was asleep when I was awake.  I'm on the
$15/mo plan, which is actually about $22/mo with taxes and fees.  But
what you really pay for with Vonage is being able to dial to non-VOIP
users, which you don't really need if you're just calling your wife.

There are also "pure" VOIP solutions like Skype.  I haven't used them
but I think maybe you can buy a special phone that's more normal instead
of sitting at your PC.

If you don't want to rely on a company like Vonage or Skype and just
want direct VOIP with regular telephones, you could buy SIP adapters for
both you and your wife (again,assuming you both have broadband).  That
takes a little knowhow, but you can figure it out if you do some digging
on the Web.  Actually I think that could be a very good solution since
you're mainly calling one person and can ensure they have an IP address.

 Five By Five wrote:

No, it's a telephone that runs over the internet protocol instead of
over a cellular network or a traditional landline.  VoIP doesn't
imply anything about a microphone or webcam.  That, too, can be done
over the internet, but VoIP (to me at least) implies that there is
some connection to the PSTN (the regular public telephone network).

In other words, you can ship them such a box and they will have a local
phone number in whatever area code you choose.  Probably that would be
your area code since you could then call without paying a toll.

   - Logan