So I have a confession: my parents have been paying for my cell phone since I've been in college and I've let them.  I'm 27 now and I *really* want to be totally independant and cell phone is the last thing on my list.  I was looking at how much cell phone bills actually are and I didn't realize they were so freaking expensive!

Before, I've always had the most basic cell phone with the most basic service because I hate phones (probably why I've waited so long to get off the parents cell phone bill).  Now I'm going crazy and looking into an iPhone and it's insane how much that is per month!

The wife also somehow happens to be on her parents bill (though they're forcing her to pay for her own) and we're both AT&T so we're probably going with that but damn that's expensive!

I may completely neglect my phone and use maybe 10 minutes per month but the wife uses her Blackberry like crazy.  Would we really have to spend like $150 per month just on phone!?  That's insane!

Also, just a random question since we're talking about it: would I be able to have an iPhone and would she be able to have a Blackberry and still be on the basic family plan ith AT&T?  AT&T supports both of those I just didn't know if we could both use different gadgets like that since I imagine iPhone hates Blackberry and vice versa.

Tomorrow I'm likely to go to the AT&T place and start looking at iPhones though I totally don't expect them to have any.

Yep, the US mobile phone business is completely screwed up - as catastrophically deregulated and screwed by corporate pigopolists as, well, pretty much every other sector of US society these days.

I'm a longtime ATT consumer, and they socked me with a $90 charge for data services. I was mad as heck, because I have a basic plan with nothing fancy, but here's what happened: the Big Four pigolopists are all charging 20 cents per text message. It's outrageous, because the data requirements for texting are almost nil, it costs them nothing, it's a pure monopoly scam to screw consumers. (Congress is apparently upset and starting an investigation, and multiple class action lawsuits are being filed, so we'll see what happens.)

Look around for a budget service from Cricket or some of the other new providers. Customer service and handset choice may not be the greatest, but if you're in the right area (be sure to check their coverage map) you can get decent service (lots of minutes and free messaging) for $40/month.

Indeed. Cell phones are the new form of racketeering after the long-distance phone business was handicapped by legislation.