Opps, I mean HAS BECOME useless.

Yes Virgin has numerous different types of plans - which is great. Choice is great.

Comparing all these plans to one another is essentially useless unless you FIRST talk about how YOU will actually use your phone and how often, etc etc.

Everyone that cared on this forum now knows about Virgin mobile and it's various plans. Each person can now look at their own usage patterns and my guess is that most or all of them will keep using their Speakout service.

Not because of some extreme loyalty to a store that sells slurpees, but because Speakout works out a lot better for them.

Bridonca, if Virgin is cheaper for you, then congrats! Go for it.

In just one day, not counting the SAF, the best you can get out of Speak Out Wireless with $100, is 500 minutes. However, with Virgin, you can get unlimited calling on a weekend for $1 a day. That works out to be 1440 minutes. And that is just for $1 a 1 day. There are over 100 weekends in a year. So for $100 I can get 144000 minutes from Virgin for a year, if optimized to the maximum. That is 288 times more minutes than you could get with Speak Out Wireless! With this extreme example, I believe I have demonstrated you can get more minutes from Virgin!

Big Ang: I agree, On average, you need to spend $8.33 a month. But you do not have to do that with every month. You can be pretty chatty some months, and not so chatty other months. But as my demonstration above proves, all you need to do is spend a $1 on certain days, and it is rather easy to get much more airtime with Virgin than you can with Speak Out / Petro Canada.

I am not trying to debate that Speak Out / Petro Canada can be cheaper, because especially with Speakout, $25 can get you a year of service, albeit at close to $0.50 a minute. But I think I made it rather clear you can get many more minutes out of Virgin than anyone else, especially with just $100.

JL68: I use a $100 card, which lasts 365 days. Anything with a lower denomination on any of the plans is a bit of a rip off, although Virgin's are really bad.

bridonca said:

Here is my math.

Virgin: 19 minutes times $0.30 equals $5.70
SO/PC: 19 minutes times $0.25 then add $0.99 SAF equals $5.74

If you use less than 19 minutes a month, Virgin gets even cheaper.

Your comparison was not appropriate because even if you use 19 minutes/month you still have to pay minimum $15.00/month to Virgin. That is equal to 79c/minute. $15.00 can give you 50 minutes with Virgin and with SO $15.00 minus $0.99 of 911 fee you would have 56 minutes. SO still cheaper even with 911 fee.

You're not looking at the overall monthly cost. And you're math is incomplete.

First off, if you can get away with paying only $5.70 with Virgin per month, then you're doing something that no one else can do. Remember, if you buy a $15 airtime card, it expires in a month, so you'll have to buy another one next month, and another the month after, etc. So that averages out to $15/mth. Alternatively you can go with a $100 airtime card that has a 365 day expiry, but that still averages out to $8.33/mth. And to repeat what Rob said in the above post, you're getting a lot more minutes with a $100 Speakout card.

Also, if you're a Speakout client who averages 100 minutes per month or more, you're probably going to buy a $75 or $100 card to get the cheaper per minute rate. So $20/mth at $.20/minute gets you 100 minutes per month with Speakout.

So, you were almost right with that point. Customers that CONSISTENTLY use a MINIMUM of 100 minutes per month would find it cheaper to go with the $20/mth plan with Virgin.

Customers that average less than 100 minutes per month would find it less expensive to go with Speakout.

Obviously, anyone can find SOMEONE who can get cheaper service with ANY other cellphone company. In fact, if you use about $20/mth consistently, I'd recommend looking at http://www.dcitelecom.com instead of Virgin.

Virgin: 19 minutes times $0.30 equals $5.70
SO/PC: 19 minutes times $0.25 then add $0.99 SAF equals $5.74

If you use less than 19 minutes a month, Virgin gets even cheaper.

If you make calls at around the 200 minute mark, and you use virgin's $20 plan, that is $0.10 a minute.

With the Virgin $20 plan, if you make over 80 phone calls, it is cheaper than Speak Out and Petro Canada.

In closing, Speak Out wireless and Petro Canada are better deals if you use between 20 to 80 minutes a month. However, any other time period makes Virgin cheaper.

bridonca said:

I own a Virgin phone, it costs me $100 a year. What Virgin offers opposed to the competition is flexibility. Virgin's 30 cents a minutes is probably better than 7-11 and Petro Canada's 25 cent rates because Virgin charges no 911 fee.

What you "probably" think and what is fact are not the same. I too have a Virgin 30 cents/min plan and my wife a SO cell. Virgin's $100 will get you 333 minutes. A $100 at 7-11 will get you 500 minutes and the 911 fee costs 5 minutes per month so you end up with 440 minutes. Petro Can your total minutes at .25 cents minus the 911 fee is 352. So perhaps you should do the math before you post what you think should be better. You are correct that Virgin does offer many more flexable packages that SO or PetroCan, but when you compare apples to apples, Virgin is the most expensive of these three choices even with the 911 fee.

What Virgin offers opposed to the competition is flexibility.

I would argue just the opposite. SO and PCM have a single, simple pricing plan. You pay only for what you use. (Yes there's a 911 fee but I think of it as an account maintenance fee. I don't mind paying $12 a year, compared to your $100, for the ability to use my phone when I want for as little or as much as I want.)

Virgin and the others offer myriad options that try to get you to commit to a high monthly rate. That may make sense if you're a heavy user every month. If that's your situation then perhaps Virgin is best for you. But there are many others for whom that would be throwing money down the drain.

There is no single best solution that applies to everyone.

As for the GSM and CDMA quality, it seems like the GSM networks are more robust in Ontario, but CDMA rules in the rest of the country. There are likely exceptions, but that is mostly true.

Rob said:

I believe that once your on any monthly prepaid plan with Virgin, your airtime balance doesn't expire.

Yes, they do expire as per my earlier post. If you top up before your airtime expired then all of the entire balance will be rollover to the new expiry day just like the other carriers do. Also if you register with their AutoTopup then your airtime will never expire.

I believe that once your on any monthly prepaid plan with Virgin, your airtime balance doesn't expire.

With SpeakOut your balance rolls over whenever you add airtime. That can be as infrequent as once a year. There's no need to subscribe to a monthly prepaid airtime plan (other than the mandatory 99¢ monthly 911 fee.)

Bottom line: With SO your minimum annual expenditure is $25 (~$2/month) of which about half is the 911 fee and the rest is airtime.

Yes, a SO sim card will work in the Nokia 2610 you have now, as long as it's unlocked.

The $100 airtime+free phone promotion usually happens in August, and again around Christmas.

$10/month only buys you the option of 10 cents per minute.

now I am getting confused here,
did you mean that a montly $10 fee does not give any airtime ?
i would need to spend another $10 to be able to use the phone ?

just double checked virgin's website and talked to a custumer service representative and found out that these Virgin folks are more "confusing" than koodo with their "tab" system

The minimum monthly prepaid plan costs $15, and it is 30 cents/minute.
If I would pay another $10, then it would be 10 cents/ minute.
It would be equal $25 for 250 minutes.....too much money and time for me !
I guess, this puts Virgin into a different category !

in fact, i do not like virgin NOR any other canadian providers, all of them are gready robbers, when I compare their rate/service to other countries

however, my current Rogers prepaid is really expensive to keep, so I want to change, maybe just buy a SO SIM card and stick it into this NOKIA 2610, and see if it will work ?

too bad, that I do not see any of the mentioned promotion ($100 airtime+free phone), anybody knows when was the last time it was offered?
or if it is coming up again ?

Just a note about how expensive the phones are. Last 4 times I bought a Speakout phone (for me and others) the price of the phone ranged from $0.00 to $15 since I bought them during their 'Buy $100 in airtime and get $74 off a phone' promo.

How much does a Virgin phone cost? Is it more than the $0 I spent on my Speakout phone?

BTW, I have a friend who won a Virgin phone in a contest and had no use for it, and he had trouble GIVING the Virgin phone away to his friends! If you like Virgin so much, I'll see if he still has it and I'll sell it to you for $5.

Virgin $120/year
10c/min = 1200 minutes / year

I think that paying $20 more to Virgin per year, the received extra talktime of 760 minutes (1200-440) is well worth every penny....since these 700 minutes cost only 0.027 cents/ min.

This information was wrong. First of all, the Virgin top up airtime card and expiry days as follows:

$15 expire in 30 days
$25 60 days
$50 60 days
$100 365 days

Virgin's $10/month only buy you the option of 10c/minute. You have to buy this airtime card to use your phone. Even if you buy the $100 card that give you 365 days. The total cost for a year will be $220 minimum and you get 1000 minutes. With SO you buy $200 will give you the same 1000 minutes but you can buy less if you don't need it. But you have to pay MINIMUM $220 a year with Virgin.

As I mentioned earlier, one major reason why I left Virgin for Speak Out is the networks they use. Speak Out's network is better than Virgin's, and the local calling area for me is considerably better as well. (It covers a good chunk of Ontario)