WHAT FEATURES DO YOU NEED IN A WIRELESS PHONE AND SERVICE PROVIDER?

When choosing a phone or a service provider, the same is true—ask your friends. People who have wireless phones are great resources when you are looking for a phone.

Ask them how the phone works, whether it is too heavy, if you can see the numbers on the screen easily, and so on. Be sure to think about all the things you can do with a wireless phone and whether those things are important to you.

Here is a short list of the features that you may want to use with your new phone:

� Wireless Internet Access The ability to look at certain Web sites.

� Short Message Service (SMS) and E-Mail The ability to send and receive short messages and text e-mails.


� Speaker Phone Some phones allow you to use them as a speaker phone.

� Two-way Radio Service Nextel offers a “push to talk” service that lets your phone work like a walkie-talkie for quick, cheap conversations between two or more people.

� Downloading Different Ring Tones You can customize the way your phone rings, from a popular song to a classical hit.

What about the Technical Side of the Phone?
When you are looking at a phone, you also want to make sure its technical specifications meet your needs.These are things like the expected battery life, the ability to add a headset, the size of the screen, and more.

You can see all the details of each phone at www.GetConnected.com, but here is a short list of what you should consider: � Size considerations including the height and the weight of the phone
�
Expected battery life for talk time and standby time � Lines of text and characters per line on the screen (how big the screen is and how big the numbers are on the screen)

� Internet capabilities

� Messaging capabilities


Usage Considerations
The most important thing to understand, but the toughest to figure out, is how you will use your phone. If you do a little simple planning now, you will save some money in the selection of your monthly service plan.

Will you use it only when you get a flat tire and need to call for help? Or will you use it from dawn to dusk as your only phone? Will you call long distance or just locally? How about international calls?

Rate plans offer the most confusing set of choices yet—peak time, off-peak time, long distance included, roaming costs, wireless data, and so on.To make sure that you buy the service that you need, you need to look at how you will use your phone and make sure that you buy only what you need.The majority of wireless users do not even come close to using the minutes that the service providers give them in their rate plan.