Pay As You Go Phones: A Cost Breakdown

With the economy in the doldrums, this might not be the best time ever to get people to sign up for cell phone services that cost $100 or more every 30 days or so. It might be the right time to reconsider the idea of not agreeing to an expensive monthly contract in the first place.

You can have a cell phone and pay as you go. There are companies that offer plans that allow light users to pay by the number of talk minutes used any time of the day and also pay for each time you use text messaging or even surf the Web on your phone.

What seem to be the best deals of all are the bargain "pay by the month" plans: One fee covers unlimited everything. There are usually no credit checks involved with these plans.

These days you have a large choice of pre-paid services and service providers to choose from. All offer ways to pay less for popular cellular services. AT&T calls its the GoPhone (Stock Quote: T) , Verizon calls its Prepaid Basic/Core/Plus/Unlimited Talk (Stock Quote: VZ). T-Mobile (Stock Quote: DT) has a number of prepaid plans, and Sprint has named its prepaid division Boost (Stock Quote: S).

Actually, Boost is the non-contract service of Sprint's Nextel phone service. That means in addition to pay-as-you-go deals for voice, text and the Web, Boost users also get Nextel "walkie-talkie" services in their plans for $1 per day of use or as part of their unlimited monthly plan.

And let's discuss that plan. Boost is currently offering its unlimited pay-by-the-month plan for $50. That's unlimited everything for only 50 bucks. Voicemail, long distance and Sprint Nextel's nationwide network are included. That's a pretty good deal.

What you need to know, though, is that Boost's choice of phones is limited to a small number of Motorola handsets (Stock Quote: MOT) and that those handsets are more expensive to purchase than if you had signed a contract for a monthly service plan in which part of your charges helps to subsidize the handset's real price.