Save BIG with your existing cellphone technology

3) Usage, specifically your normal usage, or the things you do, or want to do when you’re online should be considered, along with your discipline level. Other factors to consider are, do you generally use your computer from your office or home? Do you use it on the road? Do you generally use your smart phone where there is WiFi available, such as from the motel in which you’re staying? Next, take into account what you do with your computer or smart phone. If you want to use it for an occasional call, or emergency calls only, and you generally will be texting and emailing text documents, you will be using very little bandwidth even when using your MiFi. If you want to watch movies or send and receive pictures, you either have to be disciplined enough to wait until you have public WiFi available, or just get the unlimited service.

4) Performance: 4G is about 10 times faster than 3G for most things. If money is not the deciding factor and 4G is available in your areas and you download movies and/or numerous large files, then 4G could be a good choice for you.

5) Total Cost is not determined by the cheapest service. Public WiFi is popping up at more and more places and the locations are generally much closer together than the nearest payphones us older folks used to use. If you have a home and/or office WiFi connection and just a little discipline, and can comply with what we have outlined above, you can save $400 – $3000 per year using TruConnect. If you can’t, you can easily run up large bills since 2GB of bandwidth from TruConnect is $78, about double that of standard 2GB per month cell phone rates. Our TruConnect bill averages less than $10 per month and we use it whenever we are out of our office or home, including using GPS. We just look around via our cell phone and connect to public WiFi whenever possible. If no public WiFi is available, we use our TruConnect MiFi. WiFi hotspots can be found in libraries, restaurants and coffee shops,  fire stations and many more places right now.

6) Personal Preference: Just think about it, be honest with yourself, and decide what is really best for you. WiFi hotspots seem to be about the same distances apart as Payphones used to be. If you’re not old enough to remember when payphones were everywhere, ask your grandparents. With WiFi however, you don’t have to get out of your car to make a call. One thing to keep in mind, monthly costs make up most of our living expenses, a little forethought can free up a few grand, and that is serious money, at least to most of us.

 III What are the best VOIP applications for you? We have Skype and TextFree on our iPhones. We share and use Skype like a house phone, and here is a little-known trick: you can receive and/or make separate calls at the same time using the same Skype account on different phones. It works like a group of business lines, if one is busy, the phones still ring and work. There is one thing you can’t do, you can’t call the same Skype number/account you are calling from. While we generally text each other, when we do call each other, one of us uses TextFree to call our Skype (Home Phone) number. We chose to buy $1.99 worth of minutes from TextFree in order to do this. We give out TextFree numbers to friends as our personal “Cell Phone” numbers. While they generally text us, it is less confusing for people to let them just call our “Cell Number“, and what the heck, it’s free and the quality is fantastic!

In Closing: You should have all the information you need between this article and the links in it to make a good choice on your new cloud-based phone/texting/Internet communication system. This is information that we’re sure the cell phone service providers don’t want you to know. We hope this article helps you save some real money via technology.