With Prepaid Wireless Beware of the 911 Fees

From the Houston Chronicle comes news that the Texas Legislature has ruled that prepaid cell phone users are required to pay 911 Fees. However, there is some dispute over the application of the law and how often and how much prepaid users much pay for their 911 services.

In the past prepaid providers such as TracPhone and Virgin Mobile paid their 911 fees out of their own revenues. In 2005 they asked for refunds of these fees, claiming they did not have subscribers but 3rd party users of cell phone equipment in services. Texas disagreed.

The result of this is the possibility that Pay as you go wireless customers will pay much higher 911 fees than those on a monthly contract.

Monthly contract cell phone users pay a flat fee for 911 service, currently there is a 50 cent fee collected on each monthly bill.

Since prepaid cell phone minutes can be bought in many different amounts and used over various periods of time, this creates an issue. The 5o cent fee has been interpreted in a way that this fee would be collected on each purchase of a prepaid cell phone device or prepaid minute card or refill. So a person who can afford to buy a year or several months worth of prepaid airtime might only pay 50 cents total. Someone who purchases minutes in smaller allotments more frequently may end up pay fifty cents several times, resulting in paying more than 50 cents every month.

Pay as you go wireless service offers a lot of flexibility but keep in mind any extras fees you may end up paying. These could be taxes and other government fees as well as carrier specific charges for non use,etc.