Ian Nairn / December 2, 2022

Cellular Plan and Fee Complexity Demystified

By Lee Balaklaw

Originally Published on August 24th, 2022, on NoJitter.com

Cellphone plans can be tricky to understand. Here’s a breakdown for getting the most out of your data plan.

Industry experts have written many articles about landlines, voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) services, fiber options, and 5G cellular—but few write about the complexity of the marketplace for cellphone data plans and line access fees.

Each of the major vendors, T-Mobile (with the merged Sprint), AT&T, and Verizon, have their unique way of doing things with cellphone plans. Sprint has been in the news recently because of lawsuits brought due to how the company executed its plans. Under their typical plan, one paid for equipment with an 18-month lease payment. After that, the customer had the option of paying another six months of payments if they notified Sprint of that intent. After those six months, the customer would own the phone. If the customer didn’t notify Sprint, then the lease payments continued.

The problem was that 18 months after purchase, most of the clients we saw had forgotten to tell Sprint they wanted to pay off the devices. In some instances, the clients continued to pay lease payments for many months after the lease ended. We have seen clients paying lease payments for the phones up to 18 months past the original 18-month lease. This plan information is in the fine print of the Sprint agreements. However, many clients didn’t read the fine print. We were able to get those clients out of that perpetual lease and, in some cases, get those overly lengthy lease payments credited back to buying out the phone.

AT&T has a policy that it can suspend a device for six months in one year, but that comes in two flavors — reduced payments or no payments. Clients we have seen suspended devices without the understanding that if they didn’t suspend the devices without payment, AT&T would continue to bill them (albeit at a reduced rate). Verizon allows suspension of a device, with no payment for three months at a time, but only for two three-month periods in a year.

Did you know that data plans come in three varieties? They are defined data plans with a set number of gigabytes of data per month, unlimited plans, and pooled plans. Pooled plans are most often seen with government clients often have pooled plans. Each device within the plan must have a certain amount of data paid for. But the amount of data purchased per device can vary, and smartphones pay a different rate than data-only devices. An appropriate shuffle of data amount among each device is more cost-effective than buying the same amount of data for every device that is adding data to the data pool.

Unlimited plans come in three different variations: basic, medium, and high-end. The basic plan typically has 15 -20GB per device/per month of high-speed data. After the high-speed data is used-up, the phone reverts to low-speed data. So, technically the data is unlimited, but slow-speed data would be a challenge to use while you cruise past your interstate exit waiting for the Waze application to update and give you directions.

But wait, there’s more. Most basic plans do not allow tethering of your phone by acting as a hotspot for your other devices. In addition to that complexity, the amount you pay per device goes down in unlimited plans, depending upon how many devices you have. More devices mean lower costs per device. So, you thought you would get your kids off your plan when they married and stopped working for you? After you see the sticker shock of what your plan cost will go up to after their phone is off your account, you will retain them on your business plan, perhaps forever.

Another nuance added over the past few years is autopay with paperless billing. You give your credit card to the phone company, and then no muss, no fuss, your cellphone bill is paid each month. You may also receive another incentive, either a discount on the entire account per month or, more recently, a decrease of $5-10 per month/device. That method works if you actually go into the vendor’s online portal each month to look at your bill. What if there’s fraud and someone ordered a phone on your account, then shipped the phone out of state? This situation happened to a client of ours. Luckily we caught it in time because of our online account access. We handled the situation accordingly to recover the cost and get the phone returned to the vendor.

If you’re a Verizon customer with a data-limited plan, how do you prevent overage charges if you exceed your data plan limit? Some of those Verizon plans have a safety mode feature within the online portal. With safety mode enabled, you will not incur overage charges. But not all Verizon data limited plans have this feature.

If this wasn’t confusing enough, consider that — on average — cellphone plans, terms, and conditions change about every three to six months. Sometimes the names are so similar that it’s difficult to tell which is the new, newer, and newest plan. The general trend is toward more data, but at increased cost There is— no such thing as a free lunch.

Several different cost categories exist for cellphone plans , including the line access fee, data plan, and equipment fee. Then, you have add-ons such as apps, insurance, data storage, etc. The line access fee and the data-plan fee are merged together within the unlimited plans. Free programs — i.e., free for the first month — often remain on accounts as a monthly cost for years, even when they go unused. We’ve seen clients paying for data storage that they never used, sometimes for years.

Insurance for cellphones is another complex topic. Did you know that the insurance is merely a prepaid maintenance plan? Did you know that the phone you get back is a refurbished phone, not a new phone? Did you know that the deductible for the phone may be more than the phone is worth at the end of a two- or three-year contract? Did you know that depending upon the device and the insurance plan, a screen replacement for a cracked screen may be at zero cost, or the cash cost of a screen replacement can be less than the deductible on the phone? It pays to read the fine print.

We advise clients not to go it alone in this arena; the rules, pitfalls, and complexities are often too much for them to handle on a daily basis. Unless you have a consultant dealing with these issues, you might not have a way to stay on top of these issues. Monitoring the cellular account monthly is just a start but knowing what one is looking at is critical — like being able to read the code in the Matrix.

Enjoy incredible speakers, insightful educational sessions, and plenty of networking opportunities for consultants at the SCTC annual conference, Oct. 23-26 in Dallas, TX. The conference is open to everyone. Join us! 

Ian Nairn / December 2, 2022

The Mobility-Powered Desktop of the Future

By Lee Balaklaw

Originally published on April 6th, 2022, on NoJitter.com

Softphone apps on our desktop and mobile screens appear likely to replace desktop phones within the next decade.

Many prognostications surround the future of the desktop. Mobility is a large factor, with more and more workers handling calls on phones and portable devices.

Unified communications platforms have to accommodate coding for Windows desktop, Android, and Apple platforms mobile and desktop. Many people have also struggled with trying to do something on a mobile device that they can easily do on a desktop. Will this ever change?

As of 2022, change doesn’t seem likely. Why? Because it’s real estate on a viewing screen. While cell phones have gotten larger to help with this, there are still standard-sized cell phone screens useful for many. Those smaller screens and even some of the larger ones cannot duplicate the real estate of a desktop screen. Tablets can imitate some of that real estate, but again, they are smaller screens that don’t necessarily have the display abilities of desktop computers.

Part of this issue is a human one. The human eye’s ability to resolve smaller print on a cell phone screen deteriorates as we age. As a surgical resident on a plastic surgery rotation decades ago, I could see clearly, and manipulate 10-0 suture, (finer than a human hair) without magnification. Not anymore.

Unless we all start wearing magnifying lenses or have lens implants that can magnify for us, I think that cell phones, due to their screen size, will continue to have limitations requiring us to use our computer screens. I marvel at those folks who can manipulate cell phone screens and type text messages with two hands. I can’t. My fingers are too big for that. I can dictate messages, but it requires the appropriate spell checks since the dictation results can sometimes be hilarious, hideous, and sometimes offensively wrong. Dictation is faster than typing on a small screen. Even after 25+ years of using dictation technology, it’s still not perfect.

This notion brings me back to the desktop screen. Displays have gotten better, brighter, and bigger. 25+ years ago, people in general were okay with 15” screens. 20” screens (with picture tube) were deemed fantastic. Now 27”, even 32” computer desktop display screens are common—with many folks having dual displays on their desks. A small cell phone screen cannot duplicate those displays. The ease and speed of use for larger screens coupled with a mouse or other input device make them indispensable for office work. Given that humans have certain visual and tactile needs, it wouldn’t seem as if future desktops will change other than to get more complex and provide us with even more information.

One thing that seems plausible within the next decade is replacing the desktop phone with softphone apps on our desktop and mobile screens.

Desktop handsets are readily available with color screens. Handsets are also developing larger screens to see and do more with calls. But isn’t this just a duplication of what we can do with a softphone app on our desktop computer? The mobility piece of the softphone app has become more important in the era of COVID-19, as people work from home. Remote workers need their work phones to come home with them. It seems impractical to drag work phones from employees’ desks to be plugged into less secure (and most likely less capable) home networks. Connectivity issues based on the quality of such Internet connections on home networks (Wi-Fi or hard-wired) would continue until everyone has fiber Internet or a 5G ultra-wideband at home. Depending upon location, this could be years away.

This mobility component suggests that handsets as an additional duplicative expensive piece of hardware on the desktop are going away. With the convergence of desktop and mobile technology, having a softphone app that can function both on the desktop computer screen and the cell phone screen would spell the doom for desktop phone handsets. It also eliminates the need to move handsets from office to home to accommodate remote workers. You can assure privacy with a blue tooth headset, however. Because of the increased computing power available, the softphone desktop app, as a desktop phone handset replacement, would also be a fait accompli. Additionally, softphone apps are likely to become more sophisticated by leveraging that computing power and the desktop screen expansiveness.

The ease of connectivity and the merging with videoconferencing platforms would also suggest that the desktop handset is permanently on its way out. People may also wish to continue to use a desktop handset in years to come, but the question as to why will remain. The ability to save on the purchase cost of those desktop phone handsets, the cost of installation, and troubleshooting their connectivity will drive their elimination over the next 10 years. There is another consideration for those offices that currently have phone systems on-premises to handle their desktop phone handsets (in a non-hosted VoIP environment). That consideration is that as hosted VoIP seat prices drop toward the $5/seat level/month, the cost equation payback period for phone systems capital expenditure will become eliminated.

Elimination of on-premises phone systems will also accelerate migration toward softphone apps on computer desktops. While not widespread yet, the ability of employees to have their business phones as softphone apps on their personal cell phones might well change funding reimbursement for many businesses for cell phone use. If the employee leaves, the softphone app can be rendered unusable, preserving business intellectual property.

Despite having a calculator built into my computer, I still have a calculator containing paper tape on my desktop. What would it take to eliminate that? Time will tell.