Prepaid Phone Plans Finally Get Real

AT&T GoPhone Pay as You Go: While not exactly our prepaid hero, AT&T does offer a nice balance of phone choices, pricing and service. Of about a half-dozen phones and plans, the small-business play is the LG Neon ($80), running the $60 unlimited talk and text plan. The Neon is a good-looking, no-nonsense QWERTY slider with a nice camera and screen perfect for getting work done. And AT&T will sell you 100 MB of data on its network for an extra $20 a month. The next time you cough up three figures for monthly service for that iPhone of yours, think about that!

T-Mobile Prepaid: T-Mobile's small-business play in prepaid is the no-nonsense Samsung t369 ($79). Yes, it gets zero style points, but it is a legit slider with a decent keyboard, reasonable screen, voice and text performance. For a frugal $50 a month, T-Mobile offers unlimited voice and text, including picture and video messaging. Which is a good value. But beware Web access: It runs $1 per hour, which for heavy usage is a potential pricing disaster.

Verizon Prepaid: And now our prepaid zero: Verizon. It's ridiculous. Unlimited talk and text plans start at a priced-for-drug-dealers $95 a month. (That's $1,140 a year. But who's counting, right?) With add-on fees basically everywhere: Picture messages can cost 25 cents each! And there can be hefty roaming charges and other nasties on top of that. And, really, there are no business-class phones here. The Samsung Smooth?! What the heck is that? Verizon likes to say it Rules The Air. But clearly not the prepaid air. Just say "no."

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