My Electronic Fog

I have been on a journey since I decided to replace the home phone with a cell phone.  I was given a small feature phone months ago to use.  It is a nothing special flip phone type that works well.  The phone is not what I would call my ideal cell phone due to the tiny screen size on the front and slightly larger tiny screen inside.  The fact the phone is a flip phone makes it immune to accidental dialing phone numbers while in my pocket.  I wanted more, a lot more than a flip phone.

I called on my data provider from my tablet first to see what they have to offer.  Every phone I liked turned out to be a smart phone.  My provider starts data at $30 a month for 2 gigabytes; that is easy for me to stay under.  Except I already have a data plan and a smart phone requires another data plan.  Buying a phone could cost a few hundred dollars to free if I picked a not-so-good phone.  The voice plan for unlimited is $79.99, so I rounded things up to figure what I would pay monthly.  $80 for voice, $30(30) (data for tablet and phone) equals $140.  Way too much money for me to put out on a phone of any sort.  I’m not about to go around with my seven-inch tablet making Skype calls to everyone either.  My provider hit me $70 for voice, $10 for 1000 messages, $30 for data on the phone, and $30 for data on my tablet.  My provider also wanted me to pay $125 deposit because I haven’t had a phone with them before.  It was very difficult to keep this sentence free of obscenities.

It didn’t matter if I signed a two-year contract and paid money unless I paid the full price for the phone. Paying three or four hundred dollars for a phone is not something I will ever do.  I grew up with the rotary phone and the party line type of phone service.  The prices charged today for cell phones seem to come from someone’s delusional dreams.  I found myself included in the nightmare through no real fault of my own.  I first shunned twisted pair phone service when it started costing $45 to $50 dollars a month.  Costs kept going up and there was no changes made that I could see or read about.  I switched to voice over IP to reduce cost and thumb my nose at the terrestrial phone services.  My internet provider wooed me to their voip service and I readily took their bundled service.  When the bundle time limit came, the bill for voip went to the same as the local phone providers. I ditched them for a different voip that is much cheaper.  My only problem with voice over ip is when electricity is gone, so is your phone.  If there is an internet outage your phone service is out too.  That is why I got the bright idea of going totally cellular.

I found most the cell phones I liked are smartphones and too costly.  I did find a few feature phones I could tolerate.  I would still get slammed with $70 for unlimited voice and $10 a month for 1000 messages.  Those prices are unacceptable to me and I had to pay the $125 deposit still.  Then I discovered prepaid phones and $50 unlimited plans.  I found the honest truth my provider had been trying to tell me the whole time when I saw the prepaid offerings.  The truth as I see it; they will sell me crap starting at $50 a month for service and I have to pay for a very inferior phone.  The rest of the truth is selling off feature phones and stocks very few messaging phones that are not smart phones.  The only conclusion I could draw is my provider only wants to sell smart phones.  Smart phones aren’t so bad such as they are.

Really though, what need does the average person have for a smart phone?  Feature phones used to do all the things smart phones do except office applications.  Smart phones manage to do more than feature phones because they have an operating system that applications are written for.  Feature phones also have operating systems, but few applications are written for and made available for them.  My feature phone isn’t something I would call the ultimate phone.  I can surf the web some and do a number of other things similar to a smart phone. I can take a picture and manipulate it a few different ways.  Most of the other things on my feature phone are gimmicks designed to get me to pay them more.  I do have Bluetooth and some web browsing along with messaging.  I can use IM or text messaging all types because of the plan package I have.  The reason I don’t want a smart phone is I have a tablet that does all the smart phone things and I can see the screen.

The biggest disclosure I have is my Galaxy Tab I purchased through Verizon for less than $100 and a two-year contract.  That means I had to get a data plan through Verizon and their lowest plan starts at $30.  I pay them that fee for two gigabytes usage per month.  It is easy to use that much a month, but I have a WiFi router at home and I don’t travel much and use the 3G connection much.  I’ve already related what Verizon wanted for a phone with a contract plus a deposit.  The phones Verizon had to offer in their prepaid offerings are pathetic.  Sprint isn’t a company I’ll consider and neither is T-mobile.  Since I rejected Sprint I also rejected nearly all the contract cell phone services in my area.  I couldn’t find a phone I liked with them anyway.

I decided to take a look at AT&T.  I didn’t have much success other than finding more cell phones I liked.  I still ended up with a contract phone that would cost $80 to $90 a month plus a deposit over $100 dollars.  I browsed the web site and clicked on the magic words of prepaid.  I found a much wider selection of phones and even cheaper data fees.  For now AT&T will sell you 200 megabytes of data for $15 dollars.  To put that charge into perspective look at Verizon’s minimum $30 charge for 2 gigabytes of data.  By Verizon standards 1 gigabyte would cost $15 which means AT&T is grossly over charging for one fifth of a gigabyte.  AT&T charges $25 for 2 gigabytes of data.  Using AT&T rate for 2000 megabytes of data for $25.00 we end up at $.0125 per megabyte.  Calculating $15 for 200 megabytes of data is $.075 per megabyte.  Going further 4 gigabytes of data will cost $45.  The per megabyte charge there is $.01125.  That is a nice price break, or is it?  If multiplied by 2000 megabytes it comes to $22.50, but it would be a few dollars at 200 megabytes.  All of this math won’t help my price points though.

The first prepaid phone I picked out on AT&T turned out to be a smart phone.  I picked out a prepaid calling plan of $50 dollars giving me unlimited talk, text, and data (non-smart phone data) all nation wide.  All I had to do was pick a phone I could live with.  I wanted a step up from the flip phone I have and I chose a touch phone.  Looking back I may have done just as well with a slider phone.  I didn’t want buttons on the surface of the phone for accidental dialing.  All screens lock, so it doesn’t really matter.  I ended up with a phone that is OK for texting with a virtual keyboard.  The real kicker is the price point.  I paid $100 for the phone which is a one time charge.

What I learned is the phones on contract are newer versions usually costing $200 and up.  The calling plans are more expensive, but you can’t get all the items on prepaid.  I prefer the prepaid deal because I can buy another phone if I want without worry of a contract problem.  People that do use contract phones can get the latest phone provided they are at a point where their contract allows it.  I view buying a phone at low-cost on a contract the same as serving two years jail time.  I bought my tablet on contract because I know it will take a few years for the tablet market to actually evolve for me to want a new tablet.  My opinion on some cell phone prices is Occupy Wall Street should be holding rallies on iPhone and other smart phone prices.

What I found out today took me by surprise when  I got a human at AT&T.  The data pricing for the prepaid is different.  $5 for 10 megabytes, $15 for 100 megabytes, and $25 for 500 megabytes.  Ouch!  I found I could also buy data for my current phone to unlock some things like email and all that jazz.  My eyes give me fits over using my seven-inch tablet for email, I’m not going to try my phone.  The five dollar price tag on the very low ten megabytes of data would get me into a phone I would like.  I have to wonder who is kidding whom there though.  Perhaps after the first of the year I’ll sink more money into a new phone.  Adding a five dollar fee means spending $60 a year for nothing.  I did confirm the unlimited plan I have is wasting money for me as well.  The $2 a day plan would cost me $62 dollars max a month if I used my phone every day in a thirty-one day month.  If I use my phone twenty-five days a month I would spend $50 a month which is my unlimited full month cost.  I sometimes use my phone once a week and sometimes a few days a week.  I’m wasting my money; perhaps instead of figuring ways to waste more money, I should save.

Yes, I must have one.  The company simply has to buy me a smart phone; I’ll be crippled without one!  I can’t get any work done if I don’t have a smart phone.  What would I do if I have to wait for my doctor to see me for a check up?  Heaven help me, I’ll be bored, no one will notice I have something cool, I’ll be just like everyone else!  The sarcasm I’m using pretty well tells the tale of how I feel about smart phones.  I have a cell phone that can surf the web, I read that in instruction manual.  I looked at my shiny little personal communication device feeling all impressed and stuff.  I got brave when I found I have a feature phone instead of a smart phone.  I went directly to the settings of the phone and made sure to block web and text messaging.  Why the heck would I want my phone to do all those things?  It’s a cell phone, I call people on it.  OK, I lied; I use the calendar feature too.  Smart phones do so much more though.  They surf the web, allow you to see movies, make video phone calls, watch movies, play games, find your geo-location, get directions to read for getting to a new restaurant, receive and send text messages, take pictures, make movies, allow you to hook up to work servers to change documents of all sorts, and the list goes on.  Oh crap, left the best deal out.  Smart phones are way up in cool factor for people to own.

Was it Apple or AT&T that started the smart phone thing?  It was both in my mind.  The iPhone blasted into the world of cell phone users changing the face of what a cell phone is forever.  Wait, Microsoft had a cool cell phone already out there too.  Then there was umm, well the other guys.  I remember squinting in the sunlight looking at a brand new kind of cell phone back in the 90s.  Alas, that is now a lowly feature phone because it only checked email and went to a few web pages.  I have an old Nokia cell phone that does nothing but make wireless phone calls.  Gosh, what was I thinking when I bought that?  I’m a little amped up over the hype that smart phones have gotten and are still getting.  Will I waste money on one?  No, but facts are easily seen that many people will.  It’s not that people actually waste money.  They buy a product and then pay for having it.  They pay and pay and pay.

If I wasn’t retired and my job required me to surf into the company server farm, I would have a smart phone.  I’d moan and curse as I squint at the little four-inch screen at dinner and try to solve the problem.  I would at least be able to sort of answer a job induced help ticket and finish my dinner.  I was at my daughter and son-in-law’s home a while back.  Hubby texted wifey in the kitchen from the living room.  I had to ask, “What are you doing?”  I heard my daughter’s phone go off right after the message was sent.  I had a conceptual difference of opinion of texting versus talking to someone less than thirty feet away.  I wasn’t insinuating he should have called my daughter in the kitchen on the phone.  I did silently think that perhaps hubby could have just asked wifey what she was making for dinner the old-fashioned way.  Now we can video phone to ask those very same questions; that makes everything much better in my mind.

I believe I have a negative opinion when it comes to owning a smart phone.  They are cool though, I have to say that.  Has anyone noticed how the major carriers have all switched to a convoluted billing system for smart phones?  I mean things used to be universal all-inclusive.  In America you go to a cell service and buy a smart phone at a discounted price signing a two-year contract.  Then you decide what sort of phone service you want.  Then you decide what data service you want.  Then you pay an activation fee, single line fee, looking cool fee, federal required tax, pay a fee for the beauty of the web, etc.  Calling plans have gone from one price to several tiers of minutes.  The anytime minutes, day minutes, night minutes, weekend minutes, phone to phone same service minuets, “Did I leave anything out?”  How about data plans?  Two hundred megabyte plan, 1 gigabyte plan, 2 gigabyte plan, 5 gigabyte plan, and some have 10 gigabyte plans or more.  There is another thing that gets to me.

How about that data plan requirement if you have a smart phone.  Even if you do not use the data, you have to pay for data.  I liked that deal a lot.  We also have to pay anywhere from 5 dollars to 30 dollars per gigabyte over plan usage.  The roaming plans seem to really catch people off guard as well.  What if you figure out your phone contract is the pits and you tell the company to buzz off?  There is a special abbreviation for that.  ”ETF”, is Early Termination Fee.  The ETF can cost you hundreds of dollars simply because you decided the contract you had to sign to get a smart phone sucks!  In many European countries you buy a phone at total cost and  get the sim card of your choice.  I believe that means your phone is not locked down to a particular condition set by the phone service company.  I may be wrong about that.  That brings me to a very serious problem of a phone user unlocking their phone so they can make total use of their smart phone.  Oh yes, “Jail breaking” a smart phone will void your contract!  You must play by the rules each smart phone carrier sets out, or serious things are going to happen.  The most serious thing to happen is you will be able to fully utilize the phone you bought.  That takes you out of the revenue stream set up by the carriers.  Yes that is very serious indeed!  There is a lot more I have to say because I am a verbose person; I’m just not going to inflict more pain for today.