<p>We live in Thailand and our daughter will attend U Del this fall. We'll be moving to the US at the same time. In Asia most kids send out a lot more SMSs than they actually talk on the phone. My head is swimming with the numerous plans in the US for cell phone, so I'd like to ask current students (and parents) about cell phones in College -</p>
<p>Do you SMS more than talk? How many minutes do you use in a given month? Parents - do you use a family plan, or does your kids have his/her own plan? </p>
<p>Any info/help would be appreciated.</p>
<p>One more thing - how about Skype? Do any parents use Skype to talk with their kid? </p>
<p>A plan with unlimited SMS is generally a good idea, if possible. In the cases I've seen, the extra monthly charge is negligible compared to the costs that can be run up by kids not keeping track of their text messaging...</p>
<p>My parents and I downloaded Skype for international calls/texts. It's been absolutely wonderful. As long as one person has an internet connection and the other has a landline, it's also possible to call a regular phone for [usually] much cheaper than normal international rates (I've sometimes been without internet, without a computer mic, or without a great connection, so this was helpful). We all had an easy time downloading.</p>
<p>If you're able, ask your daughter's college (either directly or by posting on its CC board) whether any cell providers are particularly recommended (or not) on campus. Sometimes certain carriers don't get great service in certain places, and it'd be bad luck to do all the research only for your daughter to wind up with a somewhat useless phone plan.</p>
<p>Our family uses a family plan through AT&T/Cingular, and even all talking pretty extensively, we never manage to go through all the minutes, which roll over month to month. Calls made to people using the same carrier don't count towards the total minutes, and since it's a very popular carrier in our area, we never manage to make too great a dent.</p>
<p>Personally, I got much less use out of my phone while on campus than while off. Most of the time, I was just using it to call home, or friends from home, since others could often be easily reached in person, via the computer, or via the landline (which I happened to have in the dorm). Just a random fact. </p>
<p>I will be using skype to talk to my mom while I am in a different country this summer. It seems to work pretty well, and it's just really neat. </p>
<p>I would definitely echo the person above me about getting unlimited texts, too.</p>
<p>more texts definetly.. i really only use my phone to talk to my parents/friends from home. and if youre like me and everyone from your area has verizon you barely use any minutes per month (unlimited in network calling). unlimited texts is probably your best bet. and i deifnetly dont think you would need more than 500 minutes per month</p>
<p>I use skype to talk with my girlfriend all the time; it's nice to have the video chat to make up for the times we can't visit on weekends. I'd like to get my parents to try it out, but I know it'll just be a headache, and they're get annoyed enough just talking to me on the phone for an hour every third day or so. :p</p>
<p>My family is on a family plan, since I try to do all of my calling after 9 PM, so I don't rack up that many minutes. My brother and dad both use a ton, so I think that's where all of the minutes go to. I, personally, never text since I don't like doing it.</p>
<p>One of my friends does use Skype to talk with his family all the time, but his family is scattered around Europe, so it would be extremely expensive to talk with them any other way.</p>
<p>I use a lot more texts than minutes. I'm on a family plan with 3 phones, 2500 minutes, and unlimited texting. We hardly ever use all of our minutes because of the free phone to phone with the same carrier. </p>
<p>I'd think about getting AT&T because their unused minutes roll over to the next month. How many minutes you get really depends on how much you talk to people. I also recommend finding out what carrier has the best service in that area.</p>
<p>Skype's pretty amazing and inexpensive for international calls. I've talked to my boyfriend almost every day he's been away in Europe this summer. However, your kid should probably also get a cell phone plan (with liberal text messaging) to talk to people at school. I'd recommend less minutes, more SMS.</p>
<p>I'm actually planning on using Skype to talk to my Dad next year (incoming freshmen)- and he'll only be a few states away (got to love free video messaging...)</p>
<p>One thing about Skype: Some schools monitor downloads, and if you exceed a certain amount in a given time frame, your internet can be temporarily frozen. Video chatting via Skype is one way to eat through bandwidth. The only college about which I know this firsthand is Rutgers...don't know how widespread it is.</p>
<p>Anyway, Skype is free, lots of computers have built-in cameras, and you can certainly do some video chat before reaching your limit, so it's not like there's really a downside. Just throwing out a caution to those who might find themselves with bandwidth limits in their dorms :)</p>
<p>Thanks for all the tips. We've actually been checking out Skype and will likely load it on all of our computers before our daughter heads off to UDel. We're looking at Verizon for now - it has good signal strength in Delaware, calls within network don't count against minutes, and we can bundle our phone, internet, cable, and wireless, so calls from home phone to any of the cell phones don't count either.</p>