A little over a year ago, my wife and I switched from Cincinnati Bell Wireless to T-Mobile. This got us both new phones, which was a nice perk, but the coverage was a lateral move. I actually get more dropped calls and dead spots with T-Mobile than I did with CBW. But overall, it feels like it's comparable service.
What I'm ticked about now though, is that we are looking to switch again, but I don't want our monthly bill to go up. When shopping last year, all of the companies were offering 500-minute family plans for around $50/month + taxes. Now, the lowest plans are $60/month + taxes. These plans all include WAY more minutes than we need. Why can't we get a plan with fewer minutes?
I know a lot of people are up in arms at the oil companies right now. But what about the wireless phone companies? Sure, cell phones are a luxury, but there's a very large number of people with cell phones. I would be curious to know what percentage of wireless consumers are well under on minutes each month.
I imagine there is a very large customer base that would do just fine with 100-300 minutes per month, but no plans go this low. Sure, you can go pre-paid, but it looks like everyone except T-Mobile has a daily access fee of $1/day. If I'm pre-paid, why do I have to pay $1/day access. Figure this is $30/month + minutes now, making pre-paid more expensive than the regular plans. Plus with pre-paid, if you only get 30 minutes at a time, they expire in 30 days. They get you one way or another.
Right now, it's looking like we're stuck with T-Mobile, because I can't justify $80 per month on cell phones and that's what we'd have if we switched. We might be able to go to pre-paid with T-Mobile, but I need to crunch some more numbers to make sure we won't end up spending more on that.