Many have actually doubted the suggestion of changing from their common contract-based cell phone plan while only a few understood the reward of switching to prepaid plan. These could be due to more than a few reasons and from my delicate point of view, I can say that that they just do not have the idea on how great the plan is if used correctly; especially in terms of restricting your budget on cell phone usage. We will look into some points on how prepaid mobile plan can actually helps you to organize your spending habit as well as some other advantages.
One great benefits of switching to prepaid cell phone plan is the nature of the plan itself. When you say pre-paid, it means you have in fact paid for it before you even begin to use it. Contrary to standard contract-based plan, you will only be charged for what you had used only. You will not be charged if you don’t use it at all. The cell phone service provider will never cease their service for you if you don’t use the credit allocated for the sum you have paid. Even if they shelved the account, you will still get back the unused credit balance whenever you reload or recharge you cell phone. In short, you won’t lose any money without your permission unlike using the standard plan where you will still be billed recurrently either you make calls or not.
When it comes to using pay-as-you-go cell phone plan, you don’t have to worry about being bounded to any contract. You can always switch to another provider whenever you feel like it or whenever you feel that the current one is not providing the best service for you. There’s no such thing as penalty or being fined for doing that. No cancellation fees or anything similar to that. In other words you are always the king (say yes to customers are king!) and you can terminate the prepaid service anytime you want.
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It is interesting that the approach that vendors and carriers continue to tout to users is that they need ALL their emails on the mobile phones. Users can either register for a “push” email for mobile phones service such as the Blackberry and receive every annoying desktop email they get in its full glory with its hundreds of lines and threads. Or they can sign-up to other vendor offerings such as Google or Yahoo! with their “pull” offerings for Smart Phones which download your desktop email view to your 2×2 inch micro screen! Both types of services force you into expensive plans of $50-100 per month and you have to buy a Smart Phone. This is even the model for the more innovative devices such as the iPhone from Apple. So, what is a poor overwhelmed user to do?
Users need to look at reducing the volume and hence expense of the “all” or “nothing” model. The enterprise can look at buying a product that only forwards the critical emails to users with the option to reduce the content of those emails down to the key content. Consumers can similarly sign-up to Smart Email-to-SMS portals that automatically reduce the number of packets (and hence cost) based on salient content and then decide if that email should go mobile or not.
The carriers and the vendors would have us believe there are no such services! All you have to do is look at innovative solutions like the Email to SMS solution of Amika Mobile to know that there are great alternatives out there!!
Over the decade I have been using mobile devices to view email, I have noticed how users get completely addicted to their devices. I recall walking around with a Nokia flip phone – circa 2000 that I finally gave up for a Motorola phone circa 2004! I still think both vendors offer great phones. Today, I walk around with a Pearl from Blackberry. 2007 marks the first time in a decade that I have accepted a Blackberry as a phone and as an email device. I had both. I get the Gist of Email from various sources (personal and enterprise) sent to me through www.amikamoble.net. I don’t bother synching my Blackberry since I don’t want the 200 or so messages I get a day to come to me mobile. I am finding that this is a good way to separate what I have to absolutely address while away from my Inbox. I am definitely an addict of mobile email and am very fussy about my mobile device. I know people who have steadfastly refused to give up their devices until the keys start to fail. The reason for this besides the form factor, look and feel is the information that these devices have onboard in terms of contacts and now pictures. One way around this is to synch the device to a desktop contact manager and download pictures and crucial information before they get lost altogether when the mobile device finally gives out as all things manufactured tend to do!
Not only do users become attached to specific mobile devices but they can personalize their mobile phones further through the effective use of black and/white lists with services such as that at www.amikamobile.net. Judicious use of filtering words during the sign-on for this service creates a highly personalized mobile phone, thereby increasing the efficacy of the forwarding of critical email alerts and their relevance to every user. Filtering can be amended later by returning to the sign-on page and making changes, additions and/or deletions as necessary.
Amika Mobile products are unique in that they take any content, analyze and distil it to key words that provide the essential information or meaning contained in the original email or web page. The products leverage artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze and abstract the salient meaning from email and web-based information. This effective use of artificial intelligence provides a personalized email summary to your mobile device. It is our belief that “pushing” all email and web-based information onto the micro-screens of today’s cell phones is not the right approach to deal with the flood of information that burdens and overloads users. We have thus established a market niche for ourselves as no other company in the world has delivered an Email-to-SMS solution that first ranks how important an email or web page is before extracting key content to be delivered to a micro-screen on a mobile phone or Blackberry. As such, we unburden users and allow them to only get critical email alerts that provide them with the important message. This technology is independent of the device, messaging platform or carrier. Read more...
