Cheap Cell Phone Plans - Which Is The Best Deal?

There are numerous cell phone carriers providing different kinds of cell phone plans with various features. There are quite a few cheap cell phone plans available everywhere but every plan that appears to be cheap might not be so, as it may contain hidden costs like taxes, service fee etc.

Price should not be the only factor while you are looking into cheap cell phone plans. You should also take into account the coverage and features it provides. There are various options to look for when you are set to shop for cheap cell phone plans which are listed below:

1) Carriers:
Alltel, AT&T, Nextel, Sprint PCS, Suncom, T-Mobile, Verizon, Cellular One, Centennial, Edge Wireless, Einstein, MetroPCS, NTELOS, SureWest, U.S. Cellular etc.

2) Coverage:
Local, National.

3) Plan Type:
Individual, Shared/Family.

4) Minutes Included:
0 to 100, 101 to 500, 501 to 1000, 1001 to 2000, over 2000, unlimited.

5) Monthly Price Range:
$30 and under, $31 to $50, $51 to $80, $81 to $125, over $125.

The following checkpoints can ensure that you are not wasting your money on the plan you select and all the while they remain to be worthy plans:

- Check whether you are looking to buy a plan for just yourself or for your family.

- For a particular duration, e.g. a week, how many minutes will you talk using your plan?

- For how long will your average call lost?

- Will you make long distance calls to Canada or Mexico? If ‘yes’, then what percentage of your calls will they be?

- Will you make calls out of your home state while traveling?. If ‘yes’, then what percentage of your calls will they be?

- How often will you call after 9pm and on weekends?

- Will you have the necessity normally to not make use of your phone for a longer period of time, for e.g. while traveling overseas? Even with the case of cheap cell phone plans, it will impact your budget.

- Check whether you will access the wireless web occasionally.

- Will you use the Push-to-talk feature?

- Check whether a 2-year contract is okay for you. Remember that if you discontinue before the expiry of the contract, you will be charged with penalty fees. This is also one of the tricks of cheap cell phone plans.

- Check whether you will use the 411 directory assistance service and if ‘yes’, then how often?

- Which do you prefer - prepaid service or monthly billed (postpaid) service?

- How often will you send/receive short text messages?

The above questionnaire can serve as a checklist to ask yourself about your preferences while selecting one among all the cheap cell phone plans available so that you will know beforehand what to expect.

There are several websites that provide comparison of various cheap cell phone plans based on the features provided by each of them. That could provide an insight into your preferences to select the plan that is the perfect one for you.

There are a few things which you can do to lower your cell phone bill. Begin with a pre-paid cell phone plan. Instead of committing yourself to a carrier for a long-term contract for the minutes you don’t use or if you don’t use a cell phone frequently, it is better to take up a pre-paid plan or a pay-as-you-go plan as this will save you lot of money.

But if you feel that the pre-paid plan is not the one for you, then make a comparison of other plans between wireless carriers to locate a suitable plan for you as per your needs and the one good for your budget. In this way, you can find a suitable plan out of the many cheap cell phone plans you find.

There are a few plans that allow parents to take control over their kid’s cell phone usage. This could save a lot of money. There are still a few carriers that provide unlimited calls within a group. If most of the calls you make are going to be only local calls, then choose a local carrier that has package deals.

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