Pay as you go Phones

I think I may be the last person in the world without a cell phone. I’m pretty sure I’m the last student without a cell phone, as even my fourteen year-old cousin, someone who can’t even get behind the wheel of a car, has her own phone.

I was walking through a department store the other day and I saw a phone designed for elementary school children; it didn’t have any numbers, only buttons to call numbers that the kids’ parents have pre-programmed into the phone. And then there’s me, well past twenty years old and still without a cell phone.

For a long time I persuaded myself that I didn’t need a cell phone, and even if I did need a cell phone I definitely couldn’t afford a cell phone. I didn’t need once since I never talked on the phone much in the first place, so why would I need to call people on the go?

I definitely didn’t want people to be able to reach me anywhere I went. And then there was the money issue. I just couldn’t afford to pay $40 every month to cover my cell phone bill, at least not unless I stopped eating.

Cell Phone News State prisons want to jam cell phones (The Greenville News) COLUMBIA -- Cell phones, the everyday tool of Americans young and old, have become such a threat inside prisons that state officials have asked the Federal Communications Commission to relax a law prohibiting state and local governments from jamming phone signals. KHS to students: Shut off cell phones (Scottsbluff Star-Hera KEARNEY - Officials are upping the ante on cell phone policies at Kearney High School. The school year began with a new policy banning hooded sweatshirts to reduce text messaging, but that's been replaced with a ban on cell phone use. Sector Snap: Cell phones down on Nokia warning (AP via Yahoo Shares of Motorola Inc. and other makers of cell phones were down Friday morning after Nokia Corp., the largest in the field, said it expected the market to be affected by the weaker consumer confidence in several markets. Peggle Bouncing to Mobile Phones (1up.com) PopCap's addictive casual game spreading to cell phones starting later this month. Police probe cell phones to thwart criminals (San Francisco Deep in the bowels of San Francisco's Hall of Justice, Sgt. Wayne Hom plugs in a USB key to activate a new high-tech tool that has become the delight of cops, the bane of bad guys and a cloud over civil liberties - a device to extract contacts, text messages,...

Then the pay as you go phones came onto the market. Pay as you go phones offered an alternative to the standard cellular phone plans. Instead of working through a set, monthly plan, pay as you go phones work much like phone cards. You buy a certain number of minutes or amount of money to put onto your phone and you can top it up any time you want, just like a phone card. There’s usually a hitch of some sort though. For example, Virgin’s pay as you go phone system requires you to spend $30 worth of time every 90 days to keep your phone going, which generally isn’t a big deal.

Airtime with Virgin isn’t too expensive either; $.25 cents per minute for the first 10 minutes of every day, the $.10 per minute for every minute afterwards, any time during the day. The pay as you go phones are cheaper to get (sometimes you can find deals getting the phone for free if you buy enough airtime) and they don’t commit you to one geographic area or two months of bills.

Though I may not need to call people all of the time, a cell phone would be handy when trying to meet up with friends for lunch or getting directions on the road. With the new, inexpensive pay as you go phone plans, I may have to break down and get myself a cell phone.