Data or Minutes?

september 28, 2003

So, I was looking at T-Mobile's new offerings and I am somewhat disappointed, but then I looked at what I can get at AT&T Wireless and Cingular and I was happy again -- a little. Anyways, it looks like existing customers will not be able to get any plans with unlimited nights (though unlimited weekends is still available on all plans except for the Basic plan). Which kind of sucks because if I wanted unlimited nights, I would have no avenue of getting it. At this point only new customers will get the chance at getting unlimited nights. But, that's no big deal since I don't use my phone that much at nights anyways because I am at home at that time. Read more to find out the cost differences and be surprised. So, here's my T-Mobile plan currently: - $29.99/mo for 300 minutes (overage is $0.40 per minute) and unlimited weekends - $2.99/mo for 1MB data (overage is $3 per megabyte) - $0.00/mo for 300 SMS messages included with above (overage is $0.05 per message). That is a total of [b]$32.98/mo[/b] with T-Mobile for voice and data. I went to AT&T Wireless and priced a comparable plan and it turned out to cost a helluva lot more! Check out the AT&T Wireless deal: - $29.99/mo for 200 minutes + 100 minutes bonus for online special (overage is $0.45 per minute). This also gets unlimited nights AND weekends. - $7.99/mo for mMode Mega which gives 1MB of data (overage is $0.01 per kilobyte or $10.24 per megabyte). - $9.99/mo for 300 SMS messages (overage is $0.10 per message, though you can receive unlimited messages per month with all text messaging plans). That comes out to a whopping [b]$47.97/mo[/b] for a comparable plan! Cingular is a bit worse: - $29.99/mo for 250 minutes (bringing the minutes up to the 300 minutes per month at the quoted $0.45/min will make the total per month $52.49) plus 5000 night and weekend minutes. - $6.99/mo for Wireless Internet Express with 1MB of data (and a whopping $10/MB overage!!). - $4.99 for 250 SMS messages + $0.10 for each additional (bringing the number of messages to 300 as with the rest of the comparisons will make the total per month $9.99). That comes out to a ginomous [b]$69.47[/b]!! Ouch. At the end of the year: $395.76 for T-Mobile. $575.64 for AT&T Wireless ([b]+$179.88[/b] over T-Mobile). $833.64 for Cingular ([b]+$437.88[/b] over T-Mobile). So, since I don't need the unlimited nights, it is still a great deal with T-Mobile. Just wish that they would have a plan that had some unlimited nights so that in the future if I did want it, I could get it. For now the combination of the allotted minutes and data features is just too juicy to pass up. Plus, that awesome Nokia 6610 deal that they had was something truly out of the ordinary!


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