Simple Freedom is a pretty good prepaid cell phone plan which has been bought by Alltel and is going to be merged into their services. The rest of the review is more for historical purposes.
You can check out the . . .
Latest Alltel Prepaid Bargains
Now back to the Simple Freedom review.
Rates are 15 cents per minute and 50 cents per minute roaming charges. Text messages cost 10 cents to send. In short it’s cheaper than Tracfone but more expensive than Net 10. In exchange you get more stylish handsets.
Coverage
The service uses Alltel's network as its primary (local) network. Alltel claims to have the “largest network” based on an independent study, though with lots of qualifiers. Therefore presumably you won’t have to pay roaming charges very often. Actually, the fact that they have the option for roaming charges is actually means that
Simple Freedom coverage
is better for you, because you don’t face the situation as with some other carriers where if you’re in an area not covered by their network, there’s no roaming charges, you’re simply out of luck!
There are a few spots where there’s no coverage, but those are isolated areas where probably no network provides coverage.
Rates
As mentioned above, you pay 15 cents per minute within their network, outside their network you pay 50 cents per minute. Text messages cost 10 cents each. You can buy airtime in denominations of $20, $30, $50 of airtime good for 60 days each, or $100 of airtime (665 local minutes) good for one year. You can refill your airtime using either Simple Freedom or Alltel prepaid cards.
Activation
You have to activate by calling them up from another phone. When you activate your phone you get 60 minutes free, and then you can get an additional 60 free minutes by mentioning the latest (June 2007) promotional code: ACT0609
Phones
You can currently choose from five different handsets, including at least one camera phone:
Kyocera Candid
Nice camera flip phone.
Motorola W315
Basic flip phone. Downloadable ringtones, etc.
Nokia 2865i
Bluetooth phone with FM radio!
Simple conclusion
All in all, Simple Freedom is a decent prepaid wireless provider. Not the cheapest but still a little cheaper than Tracfone. The only drawback at the moment is that you cannot activate or buy airtime online. But that’s probably temporary while Alltel incorporates them into their service.