Which Cell Phone Companies & Plans Should I Choose?

There’re four big cellphone carriers, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile. These companies own the masses and have national coverage (you can check the coverage online). These companies usually have individual/family plans and prepaid plans. There are also some smaller cellphone carriers, such as Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. These small carriers may cover only parts of several states, but they have hot phones on cheap plans.

For big cellphone carriers, each of them has advantages and disadvantages. It’s always good to compare different plans before you sign up a contract. When I first came to the U.S., I chose to use a prepaid plan, which gave me more flexibility over the expenses. However, there is a definite difference in the coverage & quality & service of prepaid vs. contract. In my experience, prepaid is second to contract. Each carrier has several contract plans, including individual & family plans. Contract plans usually last 2 years, and you can’t switch carriers within 2 years. One benefit of signing a contract is that you can spend less money buying a new but locked phone. To compare various plans offered by different carriers, check this website, which helps you compare different plans. After clicking the link, you can choose desired features from the left column. Then it will give you a detailed comparison among several carriers.

Family plan is a good choice if you can find friends (up to 5 people) to share the cost. At the same time, you share voice and text on your account, and you can select specific data plans for each device. For voice/minutes, there’re four parts, anytime minutes, nights & weekend minutes, mobile to mobile minutes and additional minutes. Anytime minutes are the minutes that you can use anytime, and shared among several lines on one account. Night & weekend minutes are off-peak calling times. For AT&T, night & weekend calling times are from 9:00 p.m. - 5:59 a.m. Monday through Friday and all weekend. Mobile to mobile minutes are calls made to and from other wireless customers of the same carrier. When you choose your carrier, ask you friends about their cellphone carriers. If most of your friends are using AT&T, you may save money by signing up a contract with AT&T because calls made between AT&T customers are unlimited, and it’s included in your plan. I signed a 2-year contract with AT&T after I found friends to share the minutes. We had four lines and shared 700 minutes/month. Since most of our friends are AT&T wireless customers, we never need additional minutes (minutes in excess of the Anytime Minutes or Night & Weekend Minutes). Personally, I recommend AT&T as the best choice if you want to share a family plan. It has stronger signals than T-Mobile, and it’s cheaper than the other two big carriers.

If you prefer a no contract plan, you may check some small carriers. Currently, I’m using Virgin Mobile, which provides affordable plans and acceptable coverage. The price of my plan is $30/month, and it includes 1500 minutes, 1500 messages and 30MB data.

            

  Besides cellphones, there’re other ways to contact your friends and families. I talk with my family using Skype, which provides free Internet calls and cheap calls to phones. I also use an application WeChat to send messages to my friends.

Written by Yu Zhang

Graduate Student in Psychology