What's In Your Pocket? Um...Pocket!

I know, I know, this is a site about traditional prepaid services, where you never have to spend more than $15 a month to keep service active. But these guys are actually the second carrier offering unlimited plans in my area, the first being Five Star Wireless (local co-op really, super coverage) and their $30 a month plan.

But these guys are actually a bit better price-wise. $28 gets unlimited local minutes. $37 gets unlimited local minutes, caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, 3-way calling, text messaging, picture messaging, voicemail and national long distance.These prices don't include taxes (though they do include Pocket's own fees to my understanding) but the $37 plan has a better feature set than Five Star's unlimited plan with long distance ($15 extra on top of $30) and has a better feature set than MetroPCS's appropriately-priced plan. The phones, yes, are expensive, at $129 for the nice, though camera-less Nokia 3155i flip that's probably still a free phone on Sprint, but then again a month of service is included in the phone price and there's no steenking activation fee. Woohoo! Those two things alone make the cheapest phone's price ($99) equivalent to about $29 if you factor in the first month of service and what would normally be a $35 activation fee. Sweet. I know, this isn't for all you prepaiders out there, but it's sure neat for anyone who wants to replace their landline...

Interestingly, both Five Star and Pocket...and the two national (not nationwide though) unlimited carriers, MetroPCS and Cricket, all use CDMA 1xRTT as their network. Not GSM. Which is really interesting...says something about which network was built for that sort of thing...just a thought. Also, the only cellular-license company I listed there is Five Star, but that's probably because everyone else wasn't there from the beginning when the two cellular-block licenses per area were snatched up.

But anyway, an advisory to all: if you use more tan about 300 minutes a month, take a look to see whether an unlimited carrier of some sort (might be a special plan of a local carrier, might be something from MetroPCS, Cricket or even Revol) services your area. If you go with them you'll give up roaming beyond a relatively small local area, but you can talk all you want. Yay! And if you need to roam, that's what a single-rate Tracfone is for! And maybe have a cDMA Tracfone as backup... ;)

OK. Enough about unlimited carriers. Back to prepaid as we here like it...where all five zillion of our prepaid lines add up to $28 a month ;)