Goodbye, SprintPCS

Our SprintPCS "service" contract expired on October 5th. I have been threatening for months that this would be Liberation Day, the last day that we would have Sprint phones and Sprint "service;" on that day we would be free.

As you know if you have a cell phone, these things aren't instantaneous, but as of yesterday, Stacey and I have a shiny new pair of Motorola v330s, a shiny new pair of T-Mobile prepaid accounts, and SprintPCS (or "Sprint Together With Nextel," or whatever the hell they're calling themselves these days) will never again, ever, no matter what, see a Single Thin Dime of my money ever again.

Prepaid is clearly the way to go, unless you spend a lot of time jabbering on your cell phone, or need to use data for whatever reason. (Though they have a Sidekick prepaid data plan, too.) Have a look at your own monthly plan, then do the math. But wait, it gets better: Consider how many of your calls you could just as easily have made from a landline, and give yourself back ten cents for all those minutes. Then deduct all the fees and surchages you see on your bill — those are included in the ten cents a minute.

But here's the thing that really got me giddy last night. It's a bluetooth phone. And hey! How convenient! My computer's got bluetooth!

Download ringtones? For money? And they expire?! Surely you jest. How about I just download some free audio editing software, pick one of the thousands of songs I own on CD, chop it down to 30 seconds, and bluetooth it over to my phone instead.

Download wallpaper? For money? Surely you realize that this amounts to paying for low resolution jpegs. Are you out of your mind?! I've got a camera, I'm pretty sure I know how to crop a photo to 176x220, and I've already figured out the bluetooth connection. But thanks for playing. (Help yourself, kids. Dogtag photo, I declare thee public domain.)

Goodbye, SprintPCS. Don't let the door hit you in the ass.

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Comments

It has been some years since I had a cellular phone. I discarded it as "technology that I did not really need," a phenomenon which I experience from time to time.

I had Sprint PCS back then. Dropping their service was entertaining. They disagreed with me over the amount due. I got bills (which I ignored) for something like $.02 or $2.00 for like a year. They spent far more billing me than the amount of the alleged debt. It took far longer than I thought it should for a reasonable business to figure out the amount of money was too small to be concerned about.

I agree completely with you on the cost aspect of these phones. The average monthly bill is about $50 per month for something which is, for many, mostly a convenience. But, I clearly am in the minority; the industry reports about 200 million subscribers and about $100 billion in annual revenues.

I too own a Motorola. Great idea to import your own ringtones. Should they be imported as Mp3s or Wavs? Writing time just got a little shorter, didn't it.

Import format depends on what your phone will support. The v330 is MP3 savvy, but lots of older phones aren't.

Google "ringtone," "MacOS X," and your phone model all together and you'll probably find a few threads worth of discussion about your particular situation.

Macosxhints.com is a very good site for this kind of info.

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