| US Cellular was founded in 1983 based our of Chicago, Illinois and is currently serving 26 states.
They offer four basic prepaid plans, which are sold as a type of starter kit that includes free month of service, activation fee, free incoming minutes, and unlimited night and weekend minutes, which begin at 9 a.m. The first plan costs $25 per month and gives 100 anytime minutes with any additional minutes costing .50 a minute. This plan does not have unlimited incoming calls nor unlimited nights and weekends. |
The next plan costs $45 per month and gives 300 anytime minutes with additional minutes costing only .15 cents a minute. This plan does give unlimited incoming calls and unlimited nights and weekends and does plan three and four.
Under plan three the cost per month is $60 with 600 anytime minutes and additional minutes are .10 cents aminute.
Plan four costs $80 per month and offers 1000 anytime minutes with additional minutes costing .10 per minute.
US Cellular does offers a service that no other provider has of yet began to offer with their prepaid cellphones, which has been specialized for the hearing impaired. This plan costs $25 per month and offers the consumer unlimited text messaging however, anytime voice minutes are .50 cents per minute.
Minutes with all of these plans will expire at the end of each billing cycle, which means there are no roll over minutes.
The activation fee is $30, which is a one time fee, but is included within the starter package. The consumer does not have to worry with a contract or any credit checks.
US Cellular offers free incoming text messages and .20 cent for outgoing messages, or one of three bundle packages can be purchased.
Bundle one offers 250 text messages for $4.95 a month, bundle two offers 750 text messages for $9.95 a month, and then with bundle three you get unlimited text messages at $14.95 a month.
At this time there is not any picture messaging available, and downloads are only available with one phone, which is the Kyocera KX-9b.
Calling features offered by US Cellular are voicemail, caller ID, and call waiting.
Directory assistance costs $1.50 per call and emergency assistanc is available. There is no web access at this current time either.
Roaming charges outside of their service area is .69 per minute and nationwide long distance calls within the United States are treated as regular roaming calls.
International calls to Canada and Mexico are .50 cents a minute, while all other destinations are $1.25 per minute.
All calls to customer service are free where ever a call is made from on your phone.
US Cellular has significantly reduced its options of prepaid cellphones, especially since they only offer two phones, which only cost a penny after mail in rebate.
These phones are the Nokia 2125i and LG UX145. A purchase of other postpaid service phones may be purchased at full price, then it transferred to be activated
onto a prepaid plan.
The down side is that the full retail price of these postpaid service phones are costly.