Choosing the right plan

The first thing you should think about before choosing a wireless plan for your family is whether you really need one. That's because some of the potential benefits of cell phones sound better in theory than in practice.

Wireless plans are fine for enabling family members to reach one another in case of emergencies and for routine tasks such as getting rides, letting your kids know you're stuck in traffic or reminding your spouse to pick up the dry cleaning.

But keep in mind that while a family wireless plan means Mom and Dad are never more than a phone call away, kids will likely prove to be a bit more elusive.

Getting a wireless plan won't solve your problems with a headstrong teenager who's chronically incapable of making a curfew. If your late-night, where-the-heck-are-you call is unwelcome, there's a good chance it'll go unanswered. (Most handsets have caller ID.)

Reaching your kids during daytime hours can be equally difficult, especially when school is in session. That's because local schools require students to shut off their cell phones during school hours (Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties; Pinellas County secondary schools) or prohibit student cell phones on school property (Citrus County; Pinellas County elementary schools, unless they have written permission from a school administrator). So if a family emergency requires you to reach your son or daughter during class, you'll probably end up doing it the old-fashioned way: calling the school's main office and asking to have your child paged.

If you're looking for a phone that your child can use for periodic calls, a prepaid plan is one option to consider. It gets you a phone and a set number of prepaid minutes that are good for a predetermined time period, usually a month or two. Once you go over the limit, the phone will no longer be able to place or receive calls. To prolong your calling time, you have to pay first, much like adding minutes to a long-distance calling card.

Prepaid plans sometimes charge a higher rate per minute than individual or family postpaid plans. But they can provide a useful way of keeping a lid on chatty kids' monthly charges, plus they usually don't require signing up for a lengthy contract.

If you opt for a family wireless plan, take particular care to choose a plan that has enough monthly minutes to meet your family's needs.

Under most such plans, every phone in the plan shares a monthly bucket of minutes with the other phones belonging to the same plan. After the minutes racked up by all phones exceed the plan's allotment, a steep per-minute fee (from 20 to 40 cents) kicks in. Worse, most wireless providers don't give users a reliable way to check in mid month how many minutes have been used, an especially vexing problem when family members are all drawing from the same bucket. That can quickly make what looks like an economical plan end up being costly.

Some carriers, such as AT&T Wireless and VoiceStream, offer unlimited calling time among phones belonging to the same family plan. But that may not be as valuable as it sounds. After all, many calls that family members make to one another don't last more than a minute.

Aside from finding an attractive rate, choosing a wireless plan requires deciding how long to sign up for. While some phone companies may dangle incentives to entice you into signing a two-year agreement, try to avoid joining for more than a year at a time. The wireless market is in constant flux, so what looks like a great deal today may not look so hot in 14 months.

Then again, switching wireless plans -- called "churning" in industry parlance -- usually requires changing phone numbers, so jumping ship for another plan becomes much more complicated when you've got several people who have to change at the same time. In fact, lower churn rates are one of the big reasons family plans are attractive to wireless carriers in the first place.

"Good luck telling your children that they have to change their numbers and tell 500 of their friends that they need to change their number so Dad can save five bucks," Yankee Group analyst Roger Entner says.

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