Last month my husband and I got a cell phone bill for $285!!!!  (Excuse me while I wait for my heart rate to go back down.)  We can’t figure out how we used more than 1400 minutes, and went two hundred dollars  over our regular bill.  But it doesn’t matter, because I have had enough.

I have had enough of cell phone companies.  I have had enough of mandatory 2-year contracts when you try to buy a phone, enough of ‘minutes’, of $100 a month for a small family – when did that become ok?!

I remember when it was AT&T that everyone hated.  Cell phones represented freedom from the tyranny of Ma Bell.  Now we’ve gone so far into that abyss that many of us don’t even have home phones and can’t stand to be by ourselves in the car for ten minutes on our way to the grocery store.

“Hmm.  I’ve got ten minutes.  Maybe I could call Sharon?”  :Flips through contacts:  “Wow, I haven’t talked to Jen in ages.  Better not call her, I’ll never get her off the phone in ten minutes.”

It isn’t supposed to be like this.  We shouldn’t be afraid to be alone.  We shouldn’t shun IRL contact for a telephonic tracking system.  ”Where are you?  Yeah?  Me?  I’m at the store.  Krogers.  Yeah.  Checking out.  Where are you now?”

Luckily, I happen to have the most awesomest bestest husband in the whole wide world and sometimes he does more than indulge me in my whims.  Like when I sat him down and told him that I wanted to get rid of our cell phones…kind of.

I told him about how awesome Skype is, how we could have 10,000 minutes a month to call anywhere in the U.S. and Canada, how we could get a phone number that people could call in to, how it would free us from the tyranny of Verizon’s evilness, and how cheapcheapcheap (!) it is.  The only hiccup occurred when we found out that Skype cannot call 9-1-1. 

The solution?  We are also getting pay-as-you-go phones. 

1.  Emergencies Only.  I kept having to remind Mr. PersistentIllusion that we did not care about functionality whatsoever.  I had to repeat “emergency phone” like a 100 times.  We ended up with a seriously decent phone, however.  I won’t be embarrassed to pull it out in public.

2.  Minutes v. Money.   I noticed all the pay-as-you-go phones were trying to get us to buy minutes, which invariably expired after a certain amount of time.  I am so sick of minutes I could scream.  We decided to go with Virgin Mobile because you could put money towards your account, which don’t expire as long as you add $20 to the account every 90 days.  (They also offer minutes, but those do  expire unless you want to prepay for a whole year and honestly that was the whole point in getting rid of the cell phone in the first place!)

3.  O-K Service.  They sent my phone without a battery.  :sigh:   His came fully loaded, of course, but all we had to do was return the battery-less phone, and just order a new one.  It’s wasn’t amazing customer service, but they weren’t punks which made me happy.

4.  Phone Number.  Virgin is going to try and capture our current cell phone numbers, which would make life so much easier. 

We haven’t gotten rid of the ‘real’ cell phones yet, because we were waiting to see how Skype worked in reality.

What’s the verdict?

And, in reality – I LOVE SKYPE.  Chris set up the equipment with a minimum of fuss, but if you are completely techno-ignorant I would suggest dragging a computer geek home with you.  (It wasn’t much more complicated than installing a printer driver.)

The sound quality, so far, has been even better than our cell phones.  For some reason, I had been getting the crappiest signal at the house.  In an 8 minute conversation with my Beloved via Skype, there was only one crackle. 

Let’s talk turkey.

We spent $78 for a headset, $130 for the ‘phone’, and $48 dollars which includes a call-in phone number and service for the year.  (At a discount!)  At a total of $256, I will have spent less than what I spent on Verizon last month.  Divide that by 12 and it is approximately $21 a month for unlimited Skype service.  Once the equipment costs are out of the equation, it is a mere $4 the next year. 

(!)

For the emergency cell phones, we will have spent $20 for each phone and $20 every 90 days.  That’s a yearly, commitment free, total of $200 – or $16 a month.  Once the phones have been paid for, it will go down to $13 a month.

In total we will be spending $37 a month for two  people, with two  emergency phones and one semi-portable home line.  In year two, it will only cost $17 a month!!!

THAT’S A SAVINGS OF $576 FOR THE FIRST YEAR, AND $816 THEREAFTER.

(And that’s assuming the monthly standard cell phone cost with never going over your minutes.)  Yes, it’s ok.  You can do a little jig of joy.  I know I   will, since $816 is basically a well executed vacation to the Caribbean!

Security.

And the bonus?  Talking on a cell phone means that your signal can be intercepted by anyone.  Skype conversations, however, are encrypted.  Hack that, U.S. Government! 

Skype’s encryption “would stymie the kind of broad eavesdropping that the National Security Agency is reputed to be performing, in which it scans thousands or millions of calls at a time for certain phrases. Even a weakly encrypted call would force an eavesdropper to spend hours of computer time cracking it.”  (Skype May Make Eavesdropping Passe)

Though the article does quote Skype’s security chief as saying that Skype cooperates with “all lawful requests from relevant authorities.”  But that doesn’t mean a girl can’t dream.