Thursday, August 22, 2013

Discovering Your Mobile Phone Use Statistics




I started getting notices (text messages) from Verizon about my phone usage “nearing my contract limit for this month” a few months ago, and they have continued, but so far I have never gone over the limit.  But, last night I was checking out some incredibly cheap no-contract phone plans at Target and noticed one from Virgin Mobile for only $30 a month that had 1,500 minutes of talk, 1,500 text messages and 30 MB of data (web access) a month.  I don’t know how much web data I use, but I surely don’t use 1,500 minutes of talk and 1,500 text messages a month.  And I pay $70 or more (but got my phone for $200 – a discount form the true value).

In the process of figuring out what I really do use, I found the website above. Thanks to that website I found the incredibly useful Verizon App – that will tell me all my usage right there on the phone, any time of day or night, and for free.  Why didn’t I know that before?  Necessity is the mother of invention (or App research).  Right?

I heard that AARP offers a plan similar to Virgin’s plan for only $29 and some items are unlimited. And I read that T-Mobile and Sprint are rolling out massive upgrades to their systems (to get 4-G in more places and get better coverage).  Soon it will be a free-for-all in pricing of cell service.  Which is probably long overdue, since the market appears to be saturated.  However, I have also read that there is remarkably little “company switching” in the mobile phone business; just a few % of customers a year defect.  Customers seem to want (and need) free new phones when their contracts come up for renewal, and end up falling back in love with their current provider. So they stay on.  I know I do.

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