Does Prepaid Work as Well as Standard Cell Phone Service?
When people hear the word prepaid, they generally think of cell phones. However, they often wonder whether these phones are of the same quality as phones that they would get from common, standard carriers like Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T. In general, prepaid phones aren’t any better or worse than other phones. It depends on the carrier you’re using and the individual phone that you buy, as well as the area of the country or world you live in and what you use the phone for. Some places might not allow data to run as fast, for example, so you would use up more minutes trying to send a text or picture to someone else. When you get a prepaid phone, you have a couple of options. Some large carriers offer prepaid, but people generally use a service like Tracfone.
With this type of prepaid service, you buy a phone (for as little as twenty dollars) and purchase a minute card. It gives you a set amount of airtime to use, and if you don’t use it by a specific date you lose it. The way to keep that airtime is to purchase another minute card. You’ll get more minutes, but you’ll extend your service date, too, and the minutes you haven’t used will ‘roll over’ to that newer service date. You can get cards that are good for a month, but you can also get some that are good for one year, and many cards have double minutes. If you don’t use your cell phone a lot, this can be a very good deal.
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January 29th, 2010 at 1:55 am
I’ve got Straight talk $45.00 unlimited talk and text and it’s wonderful! I never have to worry about how much money I’m spending and can budget exactly! I also like being on Verizon as I never have any problems.
February 23rd, 2011 at 11:50 am
Generally I think you pay 50% less on prepaid plans as opposed to contract plans yet the coverage and reception quality is not sacrificed because eg: Net10 uses 3 major networks ie:Verizon,AT&T & T-mobile.
Now using Net10 prepaid plans I can stick to a budget because my plan is capped and I can choose between a variety of prepaid Net10 plans every month to suite my budget.
I don’t have any extra hidden costs to pay, no contract cancellation fee’s and I don’t get surprise statements every month.
Plus with Net10 you can call overseas for only $15 (just not on the unlimited plan) and you can phone Mexico and Canada for the price of a local call.
I will always stick with prepaid.