| AT&T Unity, Better Camera Phones, HotSpot@Home
By Allan
Keiter
This month, we’ll touch on a few completely unrelated topics.
AT&T Unity Plan
If you have AT&T landline service and are considering AT&T wireless service (or already have it), you might want to consider the AT&T Unity Plan. Available in single line or family versions, the Unity plans mirror the regular AT&T rate plans, including the same number of minutes, rollover, unlimited nights & weekends and unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes. There is one difference though: The Unity plans allow for unlimited calling to over 100 million AT&T customers, whether they are home, business or wireless.
Single line Unity Plans start at $59.99/month, so it probably only makes sense if the regular $39.99 plan doesn’t have enough minutes for you. Family Unity plans start at $69.99.
Better Camera Phones
For the past couple years, the best cameras in cell phones offered about 1.3 megapixels of resolution. This holiday season, we’re finally seeing a significant number of 2.0 megapixel cameras and even a couple at 3 megapixels. Visit our high resolution camera phones page to see what’s available with your carrier or a carrier you are considering.
HotSpot@Home
This is a new service from T-Mobile that can save you money and give you better cell phone coverage. When the service encounters an available Wi-Fi connection (e.g., a wireless network in your home), it moves calls off the cellular network and onto Wi-Fi. While on Wi-Fi, you are not using your wireless minutes.
The service costs $20 a month. Given T-Mobile’s already aggressive pricing, this probably won’t lead to a lower cell phone bill for most people, as many are already on T-Mobile’s lowest price plan. The real savings comes if you ditch your landline in favor of using T-Mobile for all your calling. In any case, the service will greatly improve in-home wireless coverage for many.
Right now, there are only a few handsets compatible with HotSpot@Home, as most T-Mobile phones don’t yet have Wi-Fi. Probably the best option is the BlackBerry Curve.
Allan
Keiter is president of MyRatePlan.com.
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