Paul Miner wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:20:28 -0800, SMS ???• ?
> <scharf.steven@geemail.com> wrote:
>
>> P.Schuman wrote:
>>> wonder which prepaid you are using ?
>>> We have our son on Virgin Mobile right now....
>>> but he's starting to eat up the minutes :)
>>> It seemed the best at 90 day interval for adding funds.
>> Virgin is one of the worst prepaid plans in terms of cost.
> <snip>
>
> If I can find a less expensive service, I'll switch to it. My wife
> uses less than 10 minutes of wireless service per month, so Virgin
> costs me $15 every 3 months, plus taxes and fees. I haven't found
> anything cheaper.

7-11 Speak-Out has a minimum cost of $25/year. It's 15¢/minute plus
$1.25 per month. You only have to add time once a year. Ten minutes per
month would be $1.25 + $1.50 = $2.75 per month. AT&T network.

PagePlus is 50¢/month and the cheapest card is $10 for 83 minutes, or
12¢/minute. Ten minutes per month would be 50¢+$1.20=$1.70, but since
you must buy airtime every four months, $10/4=$2.50/month.

With T-Mobile, if you buy $100 to start (1000 minutes), your airtime
lasts a year, and then future airtime purchases, even the least
expensive amounts will last a year. So while the first year is
$8.33/month, future years will be $10/12 months (33 minutes for $10), or
83¢/month, as you deplete the initial 1000 minutes, which would take you
about six years if you add 33 minutes a year for $10. There is no
monthly fee. If T-Mobile has coverage where you expect to need it, it's
the cheapest by far, after the first year. Alas, in many areas,
including where I live, their coverage is not good. In the latest
Consumer Reports, T-Mobile got a black circle for coverage in my area
(though they still were the second rated carrier).

In terms of coverage, look at the January Consumer Reports Magazine that
just came out. In _every_ market, a CDMA carrier was #1 (Verizon in 17
out of 20, and Alltel in 3 out of 20). PagePlus uses Verizon (and can
roam on Alltel, though at extra cost, plus there is AMPS roaming when
needed, also at extra cost). With Virgin, you're on the carrier that was
rated worst in 19 out of 20 cities, and second to worst in one city, and
you aren't able to roam onto other CDMA carriers, or onto AMPS. AMPS is
_not_ going away in rural areas in 2008, only in metro areas that have
overlapping digital.

See "http://www.cellguru.net/prepaid_compare.htm" but I notice at least
one error in his table, 7-11 is now 15¢/minute not 20¢,