There are many plans available across various cell phones providers all around the world from prepaid to postpaid to standard pay tariff's, now the cell phone providers have come up with a ‘pay as you go' plan which seems to effectively reduce the burden on the customer and be a little more customer friendly. So let's find out whether the plan is really better than the existing ones or not.

Before knowing the ‘pay as you go' plan you have to understand the standard plan. The standard plan comes with 1-2 year contract, a credit card and a minimum monthly charge of $25-30 tariff offering 200-300 minutes. If the number of minutes exceeds the allotment then, the operator charges a premium to the customer and if the minutes are not used then the customer looses them before the start of the next month. The standard comes with benefits unseen in the ‘pay as you go plan' such as benefits during the weekends, deep discounts over the phone etc.

The pay per go plan requires you to buy a cell phone and then sign up with a network provider in order to get a number. Once that's done, customer then pays $20 to keep his account active for the next 90 days. The customer then needs to buy a phone card of that particular provider and get his phone account credited with some balance. The denomination of the phone cards depend upon the network providers. So now when calls are made the account gets deducted as per the plan and if the balance turns zero before the 90 day period, the customer has to purchase another phone card and credit his account. If the 90 day period elapses, the customer has to pay $20 to keep his account active for the next 90 days and the balance from the previous month is then carried over to the next month, which usually is not possible in the standard plan. This is why this plan is known as pay as you go charges, since you only pay for what you use!

Pay as you go plan generally is more expensive than the standard plan as it charges $1.5 per minute for a call and it requires you to purchase a cell phone. But there is a lot of flexibility as the previous balance is then carried over to the next month if the account is kept active. For those people who have less talking and minimal usage of the phone, can avail this plan.