Best Prepaid Wireless

Smaller companies are creeping up on the big companies

The best prepaid wireless plans balance call quality and price. In this respect, reviews say T-Mobile has an excellent combination of call quality, customer satisfaction and cost. In large customer surveys, T-Mobile gets especially high scores for cost of service. When it comes to prepaid wireless, T-Mobile To Go plans are pretty straightforward -- $10 buys you 30 minutes; $25 yields 130 minutes, and $50 provides 400 minutes, all with 90-day expiration. If you spend $100 all at once, you will receive 1,000 minutes and have a full year to use them. If you add more minutes to your T-Mobile To Go account before your minutes expire, unused minutes roll over to the new expiration date. You can make calls anywhere in the U.S. on T-Mobile's network, even if you are outside your local area. Sending text and picture messages costs 10 cents and 25 cents respectively. Phones start at $20.

Virgin Mobile gets high ratings for overall customer satisfaction in surveys at J.D. Power and PC Magazine -- higher than T-Mobile and AT&T. Virgin Mobile also has youth appeal, with proprietary ringtones and features from MTV. Virgin Mobile has a wide variety of low-cost prepaid plans and excellent call quality, according to subscribers. What's interesting is that subscribers give Virgin Mobile higher ratings for call quality than for Sprint, the underlying carrier used by Virgin Mobile. Critics say this might be because youth-oriented subscribers aren't as concerned about call quality, or because better satisfaction generated by customer service and pricing may help minimize complaints about call quality.

With Virgin Mobile's pay-by-minute plan, it costs 20 cents per minute to talk anytime. There's also a 10 cents-per-minute plan with a monthly $7 charge. These plans are best for people who don't make many calls. All minutes expire in 30 days. Adding at least $20 every 90 days (even if you have minutes left) will keep your account and minutes active; unused minutes roll over as long as you buy additional minutes within the 30-day use period.

For those who want more talk time, Virgin Mobile offers pay-by-month plans. For example, $25 buys 200 anytime minutes with 500 night and weekend minutes, and $35 is good for 300 anytime minutes plus 1,000 night and weekend minutes. Free unlimited nights and weekends kick in at the $50 level, which also gives you 400 anytime minutes. These minutes expire at the end of each month, so if you have unused minutes, you lose them. If you go over the plan minutes, additional minutes are 20 cents each. You can add money to your account automatically by credit card or by PayPal, or you can add minutes manually with a prepaid card. Phones start at about $10.

By comparison, Verizon INpulse Core has a 10 cents-per-minute rate for calls and text messages, and unlimited Verizon mobile-to-mobile calling, but you are also charged a 99 cent daily access fee on days when you make calls. Another plan, INpulse Plus, raises the daily access fee to $1.99 but adds unlimited night minutes and drops the per-minute rate for calls and text messaging to 5 cents each. Calls made from within Verizon's national coverage area are included, but if you're outside Verizon's coverage, 69 cent per-minute roaming charges apply.

AT&T's prepaid plan has a similar pay structure of 10 cents per minute with a $1 daily access fee with free mobile-to-mobile minutes. The pay-as-you-go option costs 25 cents per minute for all calls. AT&T, like Verizon, tied for last place in the J.D. Power survey. Users noted poor call quality, account management and customer service, issues echoed by consumers posting at PrepaidReviews.com.

Boost Mobile is a division of Sprint, and it is one of the only prepaid carriers to include a walkie-talkie feature. Boost Mobile's basic pay-as-you-go wireless plan costs 10 cents per minute for days, nights and weekends. Walkie-talkie (also called push-to-talk or PTT) costs an additional $1 per day, but only on days when it is used. Optional wireless-web access (with a compatible cell phone) is 35 cents per day regardless of usage. There are no monthly payments, and you can add minutes to your phone at any time in increments of at least $10. Minutes expire after 90 days. Users especially like this low cost of service, and in J.D. Power's recent customer satisfaction survey, Boost Mobile was rated as highly as T-Mobile and Cricket. In January, Boost Mobile unveiled a $50 Monthly Unlimited plan that offers unlimited nationwide talk, text, Web and walkie-talkie use.

Net10, a division of TracFone, has received some buzz. It's running a 10 cents-per-minute plan that applies to any type of call (including roaming) at any time, and the more minutes you buy, the longer you have to use them. For instance, $20 buys 200 minutes that last for 30 days, and $200 buys 1,000 minutes that last for 180 days. At the $400 level, you receive 4,000 minutes plus 1,000 bonus minutes, all of which last for two years. Net10 has not yet been rated in big consumer surveys, so call quality, service and overall satisfaction are unknown. Some subscribers posting at PrepaidReview.com complain that customer service was slow and not helpful when they called with questions about their Net10 service. Consumers had the same problem when they called TracFone customer service with questions.

Locus Telecommunications is worth looking into if you make lots of international calls. Besides free long-distance calls in the U.S., you can also call 50 pre-selected countries -- Argentina, Japan, and Spain to name a few -- with the Locus Mobile plan. However, you can't dial international numbers directly; rather, you first call a toll-free U.S. number, then key in the international number. With Locus, $10 gets you up to 111 minutes of airtime: The first 15 minutes each day are charged at 15 cents each and 9 cents per minute thereafter. The editors at PrepaidWireless.com give Locus a high rating because it's one of the few prepaid services that folds international minutes into a domestic package. The only downside is the maze of plans available, and because rates are relatively high, the service only makes sense if you use it regularly for international calls. Minutes expire in 30 to 90 days, depending on how much you spend.

If you want to keep a cell phone on hand for emergencies but don't plan on using it regularly, you might consider a pay-as-you-go plan with a long expiration, so you don't have to worry about your minutes disappearing. T-Mobile has a good deal: If you buy 1,000 minutes for $100, they don't expire for a year. AT&T's $100 refill is similar, but adds a $1 access charge for days the phone is used. TracFone has a similar plan, but $100 provides only 400 minutes. You could spend less and still get a year of coverage -- for example, you could buy T-Mobile's $10 cards every 90 days and spend only $40 -- but you'd have to remember to renew every 90 days.