Stratton, It's great that you can get such a cheap deal, since you don't use your cell much. Unfortunately, though, the trend seems to be going, especially for very young folks, towards using a cell exclusively and no land line at all. We'll see what happens though. Muni Wifi is getting more prevalent and devices that can use wifi are getting smaller, so we may see a switch over to VOIP telephony. In fact, I think Tmobile just offered a new phone that can do both VOIP and Cell. It switches over based on whether the signal drops from one or the other. The funny thing is that if the phone starts out on Tmobile's cellular network, it racks up minutes even if it at some point switches over to a VOIP connection over a wifi network. However, it also works in reverse, so you could start a VOIP call on this phone at your home via your home wifi router, then walk out the door, get in your car, and drive 100 miles. Soon after your house it will have switched over to Tmobile's cellular network as your wifi router will be out of range, but since you started the call on a VOIP connection, Tmobile doesn't count this towards your minutes. At least not YET. The article I read about it said that their system wasn't smart enough yet. Chances, are, though, at some point they will be able to do this. But if there's enough free wifi around where you are, it might not be an issue...
Levi > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Stratton McAllister > Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2007 6:37 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Treo] Re: Article: Watchdog wants tough message sent to > Sprint > > > For the record, our carrier, Consumer Cellular > (www.consumercellular.com) > requires no contract. We can cancel at any time with no penalties. > > The monthly fee is $10 per phone per month which includes caller ID, > voicemail, call forwarding and call waiting. However, calls cost $.25 > per > minute -- no "free" minutes. And there is no data capability (no > internet). > > This is fine for us. We're both retired and use the phones only for > emergencies and the occasional call home to say we'll be late. We > don't even > leave the phones on. We probably make less than one call per month. > > In actual fact, Consumer Cellular contracts with Cingular (AT&T now, I > suppose) for the network time. > > Works for us -- and significantly less than the $15 per phone we used > to pay > CellularOne/USCellular. > > Stratton > >
