Saving On Cellphone Expenses

Cellphone (also spelled as cell phone and cell-phone) is now a necessity even to ordinary people and depending on one’s usage, the service can be availed in various kinds of subscription rates called plans. On the top category of choices for the cellular service are the postpaid and prepaid plans.  Postpaid is a subscription plan where a cellphone user pays for the service after using it while prepaid plan is the kind of service where the user pays for the credits before he uses his cellphone.

Postpaid subscription plans are designed for heavy cellphone users (those who send more text messages and calls more frequently) and normally have lower charges on calls per minute and lesser rate per text message. If you opt for a postpaid subscription, it is best to select the plan according to your average usage, such as minutes per month. If you can afford to pay at least a fixed fee of  PhP300.00 per month then postpaid plan is for you.

Admittedly, many of us are not capable of paying substantial and fixed monthly cellphone bills so the best next thing to do in availing the service is to go prepaid. One advantage of prepaid is the subscriber’s ability to spend based on need or ‘pay as you go’.

On prepaid plan, a cellphone user can buy credit for as low as PhP10.00 which according to the memorandum circular recently issued by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) should be good to use for three (3) days. Assuming that you do not send many text messages nor make much calls and you just have to make sure that you have load credits when you need it, then you will spend only PhP100.00 in a month on prepaid plan.

Because of the recent NTC circular on new expiry periods of prepaid loads, you can already save money by choosing the prepaid  subscription plan if you are not a heavy cellphone user. Shifting from postpaid to prepaid may now be a good option although you may have to wait for a while because the cellular phone companies may lower their postpaid subscription rates as an after-effect of the NTC circular.

Aside from making the right choice for your cellphone subscription plan, there are other ways of saving on your text messaging and calling activity as follows:

• Text Using Internet – If you are often online in the office, at home or in an internet café, make use of free Internet text services like those found on www.chikka.com and Yahoo! Messenger. Just be considerate to your text recipient and warn him to reply to your mobile number directly to avoid being charged extra.

• Make Only Important Text or Call – Maximize texting capacity (number of characters) per send and use unlimited texting services when you need to contact a lot of people regarding important matters.

• Use Only One Cellphone Service Provider In the Family – A one cellphone company-to-same cellphone company texts or calls are always cheaper that one cellphone company-to-another cellphone company texts or calls.

• Avoid Extra Services – Subscribing to text alerts, daily quotes, weekly logos, ringtones, etc. eat up load faster and deduct from
  your credits regularly so it is advised that you avoid these extra services.

• Make Your Own Ringtones – Instead of buying ringtones, make and download your own by finding websites where you can copy ringtone codes that can be easily encoded in some phones’ composer windows.

• Be An e-Load Retailer For The Family – If your family members are subscribers to only one cellphone company, convert your SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) to become an e-load retailer and sell prepaid credits to them. This way, you will save a minimum of ten (10%) percent on your family’s cellphone load expenses.

I may have missed some ways of saving on cellphone expenses so I request that you post those I missed here.

NOTE: Your comments are welcome here but you may wish to proceed to Café Forum for your questions and comments.