My Cell phone owage history | Reviews | Consumer forum

When I first got a cell phone in 1999, it was with Fido prepaid a Nokia 5190.

It was 33c/min and $10/month. Every month I had to work at remembering to refill at precisely 30 days to keep my balance active. It was a PITA. I lost my balance a couple of times, basically begging to get it restored. Every 30 days having to remember to refill.

It got stolen, and I replaced it a nokia 3130. Replaced that with a sony ericsoon 210.

I think that I did that for three or four years then I said forget it and got rid of a cell pone all together. I went without for a year or two when I started with PetroCanada for a year or two.

It was cheaper at 20c/min and had three month expiry dates for $25. Wow, great, what a releif. Rolled with that with a Nokia 1661 or whatever basic phone that was.

Then in 2009 I switched to Speakout. It was the 5130 that caused the switch. I remember wanting a really good MP3 player that played video, but they all cost 150, and no camera. And I hated my regular camera, it ate batteries like no tomorrow, so the 5130 was a no brainer.

One year expiry was such a releif.

Then in 2011 I lost my 5130 and got a nokia n8. I just wanted a really good camera and the n8 is it. It's not as advanced as other phones, but it does the job really well, and I paid only $250 for it, when I could have paid $700 for an iPhone 4 at the time.

So in 1999, it was 33c/min and in 2012 it's 25c/min which I would guess be 10c/min in 1999 dollars.

I've never really ever spent more than the minimum required. Cell communication is purely for convenience for me. Not essential. I've taught everyone to basically just text message me. And we only call each other for realy emergency type stuff like if we are skiing and need to meet up at specific places or if we're lost. I don't do data, I'm around wifi 80% of the time at home and work, and more and more places have wifi these days. Starbucks, homedepot tim hortons, even shoppers drug mart.

I have a home phone still because at $44 for phone and internet it's not that much cheaper to have a real phone vs going voip with all the call handling features.

If I do ditch speakout, it will be that I switch to Wind Prepaid for $80/year free incoming, and ditch the land line and go with freephoneline.ca. However, I'm only paying about $50ish a year on SO airtime.

So yep, i'm pretty happy with speakout.