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Cellular telephones are valuable accessories for millions of people, facilitating communication in a number of different formats with complete portability. The infrastructure that makes these means of communication possible is the realm of cell phone service providers.
Definition
A provider is defined as a person, organization or business that offers a product or a service. As applied to cell phones, those products and services are the phones (and auxiliary devices and accessories) as well as access to the towers leased by the providers that act as antennas to relay calls and related forms of communication.
Subscription
The majority of cell phone service providers are subscription services, which offer access to customers through a service contract of a predetermined length of time and monthly payments for that contract and any period beyond. These include major carriers Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Nextel and AT&T.
Prepaid
Other service providers operate on a prepaid business plan, where the customer has no contract and pays ahead of time for a set number of calling minutes and/or other types of messaging. These providers include Cricket, TracFone and Virgin Mobile.
Calling Plans
Service providers offer a wide range of calling plans, which can be selected based on a maximum number of minutes (and fees for extra usage) divided into day, night and weekend periods, coverage areas that can be local, regional or national, and the number of phones in use for the subscriber.
Other Services
Along with telephone access, other options available from service providers (offered on a limited or unlimited basis) can include text, photo and video messaging, mobile broadband Internet access and downloadable games, video and ring tones.
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