The reason that they don't just charge .10-20 cents a minute (probably what it costs them anyways) is that with that, people would be way more conscious about their usage. My plan with Cingular $30/month, includes 250 anytime and unlimited nights & weekends. $30/250 minutes is $.12/minute during the weekdays. If they were actually charging me $.12/min, do you think I would use it as much as I do? No, if I was in my school parking lot, I'd go inside and use the free phone..but since I'm paying for it already, I just go ahead and use it.If you don't use as many minutes as you pay for, they are getting you that way - if you use more than that, they nail you at around $.45/min.
Do you think its cheap to run a cell phone service? My uncle has a tower on one of his properties, and just rent on the tower, they pay him $1000/month. Not to mention the actual cost of the equipment, the data lines running to and from the tower, the maintence...and each company must have lots of towers, with plenty of open call capacity, or people will bitch and they will loose customers. They are also loosing money on the cell phone cost. I think its a bargain that I'm getting.
And people from Europe/Asia who get it for $.05/min, with better signal reception/technologies and no plan - lucky them, but you have to remember that the surface area is much smaller and there is not as much competition (gov mandates standards, so they dont have towers of TDMA/CDMAGSM//AMPS all in one area).
there isn't anything i can do about it, is there? How does everyone else keep track of their minutes, I don't want to go over again!
Facebook
Twitter