Should you consider prepaid wireless?

myths of prepaid wireless. Today we’re going to look at the other side: why you should choose prepaid wireless. That’s a link to our own list. Stacey Higginbotham over at GigaOM has listed her own reasons for going prepaid. Let’s take a look at each of her reasons: 1) “If a plain-old phone will work for you, and you’re willing to buy it up front.” You can get these plain old phones as part of packages at major retail outlets like Wal Mart and Target. They’re functional, and some of them even have more advanced features like Bluetooth (though certainly not all do). You can get these usually from $30 to $100, depending on the phone. The best part is that most come with an initial calling card, so you can use it instantly. 2) “If you keep your phone beyond the 2-year contract period.” I’m not quite understanding this one. I suppose it means you save money if you take your old phone from an expired contract and activate it on the carrier’s prepaid plan 3) “If you talk less than 200 minutes per month.” As we learned yesterday, about 44 percent of Americans fall into this category. As I said then, if this is the case you’re overpaying. 4) “If you have a bunch of friends and family members who are on different carriers.” One of the major advantages of the big networks is that they offer unlimited mobile to mobile minutes. So if you have a lot of friends on Verizon, you can get their bottom-level plan and enjoy free minutes to all of them. If your family and friends are spread out among many carriers, though, you lose out on that advantage. Might as well go prepaid at that point. 5) “If you rarely roam.” Even the larger carriers don’t extend roaming privileges to prepaid customers. If you’re a homebody, prepaid makes even more sense. Anyone else want to offer up a few reasons why they go prepaid?]]>