I have used a cell phone for years and I find that the carrier is more
important than the number of minutes. Of course, if you are always in your
home area, then the long distance sounds like a great deal. But, if you
travel at all and want to use your phone, coverage of the carrier in that
area is more important. Also, if you are interested in using the phone for
long distance, you need to know how much it will cost if you go over your
limit. Then you need a reliable way to keep track of how many minutes you
have used and when your billing cycle ends. The minute readings on the
phone, which you could access with sighted help, are not always accurate.
Neither are the numbers you get when you call your service and have the
voice response system give your "minutes used."
Some other carriers will say that, although they don't have digital coverage
everywhere, they will give you, or sell you, a dual-mode phone. This means
that they will switch to analog when digital is not available. If you are
on the phone when you pass from a digital to analog area, the phone call
will drop. This can be very annoying if you are traveling on the outskirts
of a digital area.
Bud Kennedy
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Seymour [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 5:24 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Cell phones
To All,
This is a techno question.
I got a call last night, with the offer of a cell phone. I am forwarding
the offers onto the group so that anybody who has a cell phone can write
back to the group and give us all an idea of what is a good buy these days.
The offer starts out with up to 4 cell phopnes mailed out to you, free of
charge. There is a 1 year commitment for the following:
$40.00 per month gives 500 weekday minutes, and 1000 weekend minutes to
speak, whether the call is out-going or in-coming. If all 1500 minutes are
used up, it comes out to 2.6 cents per minute for any call within the U.S.,
Canada, Hawaii, but not Alaska. This is more than you would pay for a local
call, but a good savings for long distance.
It always includes: Call forwarding, voice mail, call waiting, paging,
email, and caller ID. The last 3, paging, email and caller ID are visual
displays. Does anybody know of an audio cell phone? ...or maybe a cell
phone company that provides those features in audio, like when you call in
for your voice mail.
So basically, do the above terms and features sound like a good buy? Does
anybody reading this use a cell phone and can you give us all an idea of
what kind of deal this is?
The sales person for the one I just mentioned is going to call me back on
Wednesday, and I'd like to give him an answer then, so... ASAP, please.
Thank you very much.
Peter Seymour
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VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask] In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
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