Prepaid Exposed
AT&T (Go Phone)
The goPhone from AT&T is a different spin on the prepaid model, in that it really is just a regular plan, but there is no year contract. In other words, you can bail at any time, but you are charged for the month much like you would be with a regular plan. This means that you need to have a debit card, a credit card, or a bank account number for the automatic charge option. Although this would be fine for most people out there, there is a subset of people that do not have this as an option unless if they pay up front for their month via cash or other means.
AT&T's plan is one of the few that includes a data service as part of their 'pre-paid' offering. In this case, if you choose the GoPhone plan with mMode, you end up paying slightly more than without it, but that's a reasonable expectation. In addition, AT&T offers an add-on option of unlimited Night and Weekend minutes.
(section updated 11/7 to mention cash payment option)
For more information go to:
http://www.attwireless.com/gophone/
Cingular
Cingular offers two types of prepaid plans. The Nights and Weekends plan and the Unlimited Weekends Plan. The main difference is the cost of the minutes per plan. Peak rates and Off-Peak rates differ. The Unlimited Weekends Plan does charge extra to call outside of the local area where you bought the phone. Text messaging rates differ between the plans, and some additional features differ. Cingular's plans also offer an automatic refill of prepaid minutes. Go to the Cingular website for more on the details of each plan:
In many ways Cingular's plans are a hodge-podge of other carrier's plans. However, they do lack data options on the plans, even though some of the phones that they offer as part of the prepaid plans are data capable.
For the record, Cingular and T-Mobile do share networks, at least in the California and New York areas, and have roaming agreements in other areas.
Virgin Mobile
Don't be fooled with the name, Virgin Mobile is really Sprint, or at least in the sense that Sprint is really the network upon which Virgin relies for call termination. The marketing departments, customer service, product offerings are different and separate. So if you have opinions about the quality of service of the Sprint network, for good or for bad, they'll apply to Virgin as well, but your experience dealing with customer service will be exclusively Virgin's, and not Sprints.
Aside from the catchy name and some aggressive pricing, the plans offered by Virgin Mobile aren't radically different from those offered by Verizon. There are no data plans available, and text messaging has a rate of its own.
The only odd thing worth mentioning is that Virgin's rates aren't based on time of day, but on duration of the call. As of the writing of this article, when you initiate a call, it starts off at 25 cents a minute, and then decreases to 10 cents a minute after 10 minutes.
For more information go to:
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/
Boost Mobile
Again, don't be fooled by the name, Boost Mobile is really just the prepay version of Nextel's service. It utilizes the same network and technology, and also seems to share the same high prices as Nextel, but like with Virgin, the administrative functions are separate, and your experience will not be with Nextel, but with Boost Mobile.
Boost Mobile has a flat rate plan. Meaning that all calls during the day are a certain rate, as opposed to Verizon's service, for example. Of course, since this rate is an average rate, you might have a cheaper rate than other carriers during peak hours, but in off peak hours, you'll be paying more than you would be on other carriers.
Because of Nextel's walkie-talkie technology, Boost Mobile is the only prepaid plan that offers you a walkie-talkie option. Boost was smart enough to make this an attractive feature as well, by pricing it cheaply, and by unlimited usage per a daily charge. Not a bad pricing structure at all.
Of all the carriers, Boost, along with AT&T's goPhone are the only ones with an explicit reference to being able to use data on the phone (WAP). However, Boost offers theirs at a (more) reasonable price, in my opinion, for unlimited usage per day.
For more information go to:
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