Talk Isn’t Cheap? For Cellphone Users, Not Talking is Costly Too
Tue, Mar 10th, 2009
If you're like most cellphone users, you probably think you're paying less than 10 cents per minute for calls. Think again.
When you do the math, you find the average cellphone customer actually pays more than $3 per minute, according to a report being issued this week by the Utility Consumers' Action Network, a San Diego consumer advocacy group.
Read the whole story on AllThingsD
Although the calculations arriving at $3 a minute are quite suspect, we should not miss the point entirely.
Been asking around a bit and a lot of people are paying on average 30-47c per minute. Yes, $3 is outrageous, but I think 30c per minute is outrageous too.
We are promised low call rates to compensate for the fact that we sign (up to two year) contracts, yet it is obvious that we are being suckered. On prepaid you can get per minute rates of 10c, anytime, anywhere. No hidden fees, no roaming or other charges. You only pay for what you use. If you want to use it more you can top up at the same low rate. No overage charges. I use NET10, which gives me better coverage I had on contract anyway.
The writer of the article needs to check the figures. But he IS highlighting a valid issue. Everybody should be having a second look at those cell phone bills.
Cell phone calls cost $3 a minute???
This preposterous assertion from UCAN San Diego should have set off skeptical alarm bells in any reputable journalist and editor. It didn’t.
This bogus story has been circulated around the nation. Newspapers, TV stations and blogs mindlessly published or paraphrased an LA TIMES story (which the paper refuses to correct) without any effort to fact check, or even to apply the giggle test (it fails miserably).
UCAN is a far left advocacy group, masquerading as a consumer organization. They favor nationalization of the utilities, and vehemently oppose deregulation, competition and the private sector in general. The study was a classic example of junk science, or, more accurately, junk research.
UCAN surveyed their OWN membership — a group dominated by low income senior citizens sporting tattered Che Guevara T-shirts. A third of those who responded had signed up for cell phone service and then seldom if ever used it. And this is the polling sample on which UCAN tells the nation that we are averaging $3 a minute for cell phone calls.
Pathetic.