This is going to be a different post but my Blackberry, affectionately called Crackberry due to a crack on the screen is finally walking on its last leg. The tracking ball fell off the other day, which spells the end of its usability.
The gist is the problem with Blackberrys is once the track ball is gone, your cell phone is close to worthless and can’t maneuver it leaving you stuck. If Blackberry’s fame is email, without hosting your own servers or using theirs, it’s a corporate tool.
iPhone Plan Hell. If you think shopping for an iPhone plan is easy, think again. First you need to see if you really need to have an iPhone, then decide which one and finally which three carrier makes the most sense.
Which iPhone. You can currently get 3 iPhones as of December 2011, the 3GS, the regular 4 and the very cool 4S. The difference is the 3GS and 4 don’t have the famed artificial intelligence SIRI the 4S has. The specs are not the same but a regular user won’t feel much difference between all three.
All iPhones come with a 2 year contract, although AT&T is the only one that offers the 3GS, which you can get for free from Apple, if you sign up for a 2 year contract. All three offer the 4 and 4S. Sprint and Verizon use a same technology iPhone, while AT&T a different one.
OK, But What About The Plans? Sit down, brew yourself a cup of tea. It will take time to decipher them. Verizon has the most confusing website and wants you to buy without seeing the complete price first, so avoid it. Their chat service is slightly better. AT&T trails behind as far as the complexity of explanations and Sprint has the clearest descriptions. As of December 2011, Sprint is the only “unlimited” carrier, meaning you should be able to use it’s web without being throttled (slowed down).
Here is a recap of the most basic service plan you can get for an iPhone 4S. Numbers are per month:
Sprint
Single line: $80 text, web, nights 7, unlimited, 700mn talk time, AAA 10%, roughly $80 per month, roughly $90 without AAA. Activation fee (?)
Family plan: $150 with the extra iPhone, any mobile unlimited from any carrier, 1500mn talk time and same as above for both lines, AAA 10%.
Verizon
Verizon insists you buy voice and texts seperatly from data.
Single line: $30 will get you 2gb of data, $40 450mn mobile Verizon calls, $10 text 1,000 verizon to Verizon, $70, $100, activation fee $35
Family plan: gives you 700mn for $100 or 1400 = $120, the same data per line for $60 2gb altogether for $200
ATT
The basic plan: text and cell phone is $20, $40 will give 450mn of calling landlines how you would know is your guess, free AT&T mobile to mobile, and a neat feature not seen in a while with roll over minutes, $25 gives you 2gb ($10 for additional gb), $95 per month, with an activation fee of $36
Family plan: $150 will add another line, with 700mn land line calls, 2gb per, not shared.
Finally, I decided to have a look at Metro PCS which claims the best price and to be truly unlimited, unfortunately no iPhones are available.
Metro PCS
There is no contract, you pay on a month to month, whatever day the service bought, you pay the follow month’s day before. For instance if you buy you phone and service on the 15th, you will pay on the 14th of the following months.
To use their 4G spectrum, Metro PCS has an LG phone that costs $440, the unlimited $60 a month plan, you can add $10 for unlimited international calls for a total of $70.
In the 3G spectrum, there is a Samsung for $141, with $50 regular unlimited, a $60 plan which adds some TV station streaming and you can also get international calls for $10 more.
Family plan: You subtract $10 for both, i.e. a two $60 per month plan becomes $110 a month.
How Much Do I Need? Therein lies the real problem I suspect Verizon and AT&T want to cash in on as much as possible. As a rule of thumb, roughly 200 MB will be 10,000 normal emails (no intensive media attachment there), or you could view about 1,150 web pages, or 105 minutes video streaming. 2gb of data will allow you to send about 100,000 emails, or view 11,500 web pages, or 1,050 minutes of video streaming.
Final Thoughts.
How Difficult Can We Make The Plans? Both Verizon and AT&T score very high on the confusion factor. Sprint ranks better but I assume it is because they are new into the game and want to snatch the new lucrative market. Nonetheless, it is very, very confusing shopping for a cell phone plan and it feel carriers deliberately confuse on purpose to make it hard enough for anyone to eventually give up and buy any plan. The complexity of the explanations is enough to make sure 80% of clients will not understand everything. Verizon’s website is the worse example. Maneuvering it was a lesson in futility, luring you “buy” the plans without seeing the complete price.
Unlimited. Here is another catch phrase that means very little these days. Unlimited is not really unlimited and so far the only truly unlimited service is Metro PCS and it would seem Sprint, although I’m not sure if they throttle you after a certain amount. What this means is that when the carrier tags you as a heavy bandwidth consumer, you are throttled. Instead of getting full speed, they slow you down. I’m witnessing this with my home internet with Clear Communications.
To make things worse, these findings only apply for this month! You can be sure that after the holiday, prices and plans will change. There is really little to no competition in this industry, which we’ve come to see over the decades. AT&T has the biggest global coverage but Verizon might have you covered in that little tucked away city. Sprint has a strong Internet back bone and Metro PCS is riding on Sprints network.
Will we see an iPhone on T-Mobile, my current carrier and Metro PCS? You bet, st some point at least.
Confused yet? In the end, and for this month only, if you want the latest iPhone, Sprint is the way to go with $80 a month with a AAA membership. If Android is your choice and coverage is not an issue, i.e., you will say within the confine of big cities, it’s hard to beat Metro PCS prices. AT&T makes sense for global businessmen and Verizon if you travel to smaller cities within the US. Watch out for Verizon’s soon-to-come Hotspots.
What’s Next? This is where we shouldn’t be afraid or ashamed to look to visionaries and see what we can glean from our future needs. Visionaries with their stories hint at what people will use in the future. I am willing to bet Steve Jobs watched Star Trek more than once and got an inkling. The best way to do it is to play the game: “What if…?” It starts with the notion that we are doing something in a very convoluted and difficult way. How can we achieve it better? Henceforth, the CD Rom, the flip phones, the iPad, etc. One thing to consider is the following, we have only “taken” technology from Star Trek but not its very rich philosophical questions and fundamentals. We could surely use some of the wisdom expounded in those shows, in light of the current circumstances.
iMac