Tuesday, November 04, 2008
13:27 by FoxTwo
Well as far as I'm concerned, they almost were. Lately my talk times have increased almost 100%. My usual mobile phone plan comes with 300 mins and costs $48.15 a month. However, recently I have been clocking as high as 700 mins a month. For every 60 mins over the "free" bundled minutes, I pay almost $10 (16 cents a min x 60 mins). So, you can roughly guess how much my phone bills were.
Now you might be thinking, 300 mins (which is 5 hours) of talk time should be enough. Not really. If you actually calculate, it means you can only talk for 10 mins a day, for 30 days, before all your minutes are used up. A few months ago, 300 mins was enough for me. Recently though, 300 mins barely lasts me 2 weeks.
Luckily, since I recently got a new mobile phone, the Nokia E51, it is touted as a VOIP-enabled phone. As such I started exploring possibilities that I can leverage VOIP on the phone to cut my costs down.
My current problem is simple - I do not have enough "minutes" in my mobile plan, and I don't want to go up to the next higher plan as that would mean I spend $82 a month instead of $48.15. That's almost $30 more a month, every month.
After hunting around a while, I came upon 2 very potential solutions. One is by Skype, and the other by pfingo (incidentally, pfingo is not a "new startup". It's actually Starhub).
Skype has a subscription mode that seems very suitable to me. I pay US$5.95 (approx S$9) a month, and I get to call a selected country for "free". The word "free" is quoted because the small print says "up to 10,000 mins". They did not give any specifics, so I'm naturally wary. The "selected country" for me of course, is Singapore. Luckily too, that Singapore is in their list of being able to call both MOBILE and LANDLINES for free. This subscription has no "fixed" period. You can subscribe for as little as 1 month, or let Skype continue to charge your credit card every month if you choose to stay with them.
pfingo's offering is slightly different. First off, if you subscribe to pfingo, not only can you call Singapore numbers free (both mobile and landlines), you also get your very own number, free too! In other words, should you use pfingo to call your friend, he/she will see your new pfingo number on his phone instead of "withheld" or "private number". This is of some influence in my decision, as I know some of my friends will refuse outright to pickup any incoming calls that are "withheld" or "private numbers". Why? Because most of the time, these numbers are telemarketers calling to sell you something.
The downside to pfingo's offerings is the higher price per-month ($13 compared to approx $9 for Skype), as well as the minimum period to subscribe is 3 months. Thus, if you are not too sure, like I was, you can't just "try them out" for 1 month. However, if you try them via the usual way - buying $10 of credits and calling out first and deciding if they are good enough, then once you subscribe to pfingo for 3, 6 or 12 months, you can literally have the peace of mind that:
Needless to say, both have solutions for mobile phones too, so that you can use either GPRS or Wifi to make VOIP calls.
Currently I am trying out Skype for a month. I did activate a Caller ID with Skype too, but it doesn't seem to work. Opening a support ticket elicited no response. With pfingo's offering so tempting, it is very tempting to switch over to pfingo.
In a sense it's a lot more convenient for me using VOIP phones since I do not have a desk phone, and if I want to make calls out to vendors I would need to use my mobile phone. Now that I have Skype on my laptop, it's like having a phone with me too! Oh yes, my laptop easily connects with my bluetooh earpiece for my mobile phone, so there's no need to have any extra "headsets".
Conclusion:
$48.15 a month for mobile plan
$9 for Skype's subscription
Total = $57 a month for almost unlimited talktime.
Of course if you have a cheaper mobile plan than mine (ie those with 100 mins), then your costs are lowered significantly too.
You should consider VOIP to supplement your mobile plans, if you have a modern enough phone. You should seriously consider VOIP especially when your phone has WLAN capabilities ("wifi").
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13:27 by FoxTwo
Are Your Mobile Phone Bills Killing You?
Well as far as I'm concerned, they almost were. Lately my talk times have increased almost 100%. My usual mobile phone plan comes with 300 mins and costs $48.15 a month. However, recently I have been clocking as high as 700 mins a month. For every 60 mins over the "free" bundled minutes, I pay almost $10 (16 cents a min x 60 mins). So, you can roughly guess how much my phone bills were.
Now you might be thinking, 300 mins (which is 5 hours) of talk time should be enough. Not really. If you actually calculate, it means you can only talk for 10 mins a day, for 30 days, before all your minutes are used up. A few months ago, 300 mins was enough for me. Recently though, 300 mins barely lasts me 2 weeks.
Luckily, since I recently got a new mobile phone, the Nokia E51, it is touted as a VOIP-enabled phone. As such I started exploring possibilities that I can leverage VOIP on the phone to cut my costs down.
My current problem is simple - I do not have enough "minutes" in my mobile plan, and I don't want to go up to the next higher plan as that would mean I spend $82 a month instead of $48.15. That's almost $30 more a month, every month.
After hunting around a while, I came upon 2 very potential solutions. One is by Skype, and the other by pfingo (incidentally, pfingo is not a "new startup". It's actually Starhub).
Skype has a subscription mode that seems very suitable to me. I pay US$5.95 (approx S$9) a month, and I get to call a selected country for "free". The word "free" is quoted because the small print says "up to 10,000 mins". They did not give any specifics, so I'm naturally wary. The "selected country" for me of course, is Singapore. Luckily too, that Singapore is in their list of being able to call both MOBILE and LANDLINES for free. This subscription has no "fixed" period. You can subscribe for as little as 1 month, or let Skype continue to charge your credit card every month if you choose to stay with them.
pfingo's offering is slightly different. First off, if you subscribe to pfingo, not only can you call Singapore numbers free (both mobile and landlines), you also get your very own number, free too! In other words, should you use pfingo to call your friend, he/she will see your new pfingo number on his phone instead of "withheld" or "private number". This is of some influence in my decision, as I know some of my friends will refuse outright to pickup any incoming calls that are "withheld" or "private numbers". Why? Because most of the time, these numbers are telemarketers calling to sell you something.
The downside to pfingo's offerings is the higher price per-month ($13 compared to approx $9 for Skype), as well as the minimum period to subscribe is 3 months. Thus, if you are not too sure, like I was, you can't just "try them out" for 1 month. However, if you try them via the usual way - buying $10 of credits and calling out first and deciding if they are good enough, then once you subscribe to pfingo for 3, 6 or 12 months, you can literally have the peace of mind that:
- You can call out to Singapore numbers for free for the next 3, 6 or 12 months
- You have a number appearing on the other side so that people can actually see who's calling.
- If your friend didn't answer your call, ie a missed call, he can actually call you back on that number!
Needless to say, both have solutions for mobile phones too, so that you can use either GPRS or Wifi to make VOIP calls.
Currently I am trying out Skype for a month. I did activate a Caller ID with Skype too, but it doesn't seem to work. Opening a support ticket elicited no response. With pfingo's offering so tempting, it is very tempting to switch over to pfingo.
In a sense it's a lot more convenient for me using VOIP phones since I do not have a desk phone, and if I want to make calls out to vendors I would need to use my mobile phone. Now that I have Skype on my laptop, it's like having a phone with me too! Oh yes, my laptop easily connects with my bluetooh earpiece for my mobile phone, so there's no need to have any extra "headsets".
Conclusion:
$48.15 a month for mobile plan
$9 for Skype's subscription
Total = $57 a month for almost unlimited talktime.
Of course if you have a cheaper mobile plan than mine (ie those with 100 mins), then your costs are lowered significantly too.
You should consider VOIP to supplement your mobile plans, if you have a modern enough phone. You should seriously consider VOIP especially when your phone has WLAN capabilities ("wifi").
