Tough prepaid cell phones are widely acknowledged, there are still lots of misconceptions and myths. Below are listed the essential questions you should consider before buying a prepaid cell phone.

• Prepaid cell phones are hassle free and cheap option
  I think that anyone with elementary school mathematic skills can prove this issue false. Pre-paid cell phones have a significantly higher cost-per-minuge charge than standard cell phone. Ask yourself “How many minutes will you talk in a typical week?”, and be extremely realistic with your phone usage; You’ll soon find out that standard cell phone becomes way more cheaper.
  Having a pre-paid cell phone is like having plastic money (credit card) - using it seems to be cheap but the payback makes it very costly.

  If you make approx. one 5-minute call per day, it means you talk 35 minutes a week; double the calls and you speak 70 minutes per week. With 3 calls a day you are talking 100 minutes a day. Also take into note that when you talk can make huge issue on pricing.

• Prepaid minutes have expiration date
  This claim is in fact true. Minutes included do have an expiration date, usually 60 or 90 days after you buy them; with more expensive prepaid plans usually one year. The cheaper the prepaid plan, the shorter the active period is. If you don’t use your minutes within the specified period, you lose them. If your account is inactive beyond the expiration date, you’ll likely lose your phone number, too. The only way to save your unused minutes and to roll them over to the following period is by adding minutes before the current ones expire.

  One of the reasons many buy prepaid cell phones is that they don’t have to pay monthly fees. Well, you don’t have to pay that fee but if don’t want to lose your minutes or your number, you need to buy minutes.

• Prepaid cell phones provide latest phones
  Yet another false myth. Usually included handsets are between basic to moderately featured models. There are some exceptions like Virgin Mobile, which provides Kyocera Slider Sonic or T-mobile with Nokia 6101.
• Prepaid cell phones have all the features a regular cell phone
  This depends on prepaid plan. Prepaid plans typically include a specific amount of local and long-distance calls and usually Voice mail; but that’s all You usually get. Some better prepaid plans also include a small amount of SMS/text-messages or wireless web, but usually they need to bought separately (if even possible).

Before making any decisions, it is a wise practise to see what main providers can offer.

In US markets this means:

• AT & T
• Cinglular
• Sprint / Nextel
• Virgin Mobile

And on European markets:

• BT (British Telecom)
• Deutsche Telekom AG
• France Telecom
• Orange
• Tele2
• Virgin
• Vodafone

PS. An interesting quickie… the fastest growing prepaid cell phone markets are currently in South American countries like Argentina and Brasilia.