Collection of my views, interests, and life experiences (some of which tend to be related to cheapness)
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Cell Phone Costs
I'm still living without a cell phone. The only case where I would want a cell phone would be for emergencies such as car breakdowns or accidents. I do carry an old cell phone in my car. I have no service, but I can use it to call 911. I use to keep its batteries charged, but now the batteries won't keep a charge. So I'll have to depend on hooking it up to the car's cigarette lighter.
I do see the value of a cell phone outside of emergency uses such using it to call for a tow, or to call a friend for something important. Such a plan wouldn't require more than an hour of talk time per year. The best option that I've seen for this is the prepaid plans. The cheapest prepaid plan for very low usage is the $20 for 3 months. After 3 months, you have to recharge or else you will lose the service. So this prepaid plan comes out to about $80 per year or about $7 per month.
I still think there should be a plan that could cost less. Someone who only wants to use the cell for emergencies or near-emergency occassions should have cheaper alternatives. I wish number cloning could be done. This would allow people to share a cell number. This would cause complications if these people used the phone a lot causing contention on both outgoing and incoming calls. But if these people plan to just use about an hour a year, there shouldn't be any problem. This would allow the yearly cost to be shared across several people.
And there lies the problem. There's no incentive to the cell phone providers in offering such a service. They much prefer the $30/month or more cell phone plans. I believe cell phone cloning is illegal. There have been illegal incidents of cloning in which someone steals a cell phone id and uses that to make calls that are charged to the owner of the original phone without their permission. This of course should be illegal. But why should cloning be illegal if it is done with the owner's permission. If the cell phone owner agrees to have his phone cloned to share the costs, that should be allowed.
I have a feeling cell phone cloning won't be gaining popularity as a legitmate consumer tool to cut costs any time soon. I think my best bet is further cost reductions on prepaid plans. I think if they can cut the costs to $10 for 3 months, I may then take the leap and buy into a cell phone prepaid plan.
: 11:27 AM, October 29, 2005
