There’s a war going on if you haven’t noticed. The U.S. carriers are starting to lob salvos of new cellular plans and it’s not just here in the tech trenches. I was out for dinner last night and a couple at the table next to me was chatting about the recent price drops from both AT&T and Verizon. Last week is when the latest push came — Verizon cut prices and AT&T quickly followed suit. And over the few months prior, even Sprint and T-Mobile made sneak attacks. Sprint added any mobile to any mobile last September while T-Mo introduced new contract and contract-free plans in October.
In these parts, we often choose the carrier first and then pick our phones — you can thank the long term contracts and Early Termination Fees for that approach. There are many ways to do that phone plan research, but I like the simplistic approach found at BillShrink. Om pointed out their latest endeavor, which is called the Ultimate Cell Phone Plan Comparison. This easy-to-read chart highlights differences — and similarities — between the most common plans for all four major carriers. There’s a breakdown by voice minutes allowed, plus all of the extra fees for texting, data and smartphone data additions.
Personally, I’m getting a little tired of carriers discerning “data” and “smartphone data” plans. At the end of the day, data on a 3G pipe is data no matter what device it’s used with. I’d love to see the FCC put an end to this semantic silliness. It’s like a television content provider charging $20 more if you’re going to watch on a larger TV over a smaller one.

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