Reasons behind your surging phone bills – How you could keep them from soaring

Didn’t we all think that technology is gradually going to get cheaper day by day? Well, if you check the technology behind cell phones and their service providers, you’ll see that the opposite is happening. Cell phones and their service plans are consuming a big portion of your household budget each year. In recent years, the average cell phone bill in a month soared by more than $100, Verizon being the costliest carrier.

Reports reveal that Americans spend nearly 60% more on cell phone services now that we’re in 2017. Though they keep grumbling about the soaring mobile phone costs, yet they make payments on time. There are even some families with several phones which pay $300 or $400 in a month, not knowing how they should cut back on areas like cell phone expenses. NobelCom and their prepaid calling cards can help an individual and a business slash off costs on both domestic and international calls. But before you know the solution, let’s check the reasons behind soaring cell phone bills.

Reason #1: Taxes are increasing

Americans ay around 18% of their cell phone monthly bills in state, federal and local fees and taxes, as per reports from Tax Foundation. This means a 5.8% federal rate and 12.4% rate for local and state taxes. There are cities like Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Omaha where tax increases up to more than 30% of the total bill amount. The cities are increasing their taxes and such hikes are being seen in several places throughout the country.

Reason #2: Too many fees are being added

Cell phone service providers are adding more fees for various services. For each line, there is an activation fee which can cost you up to $35 or even more. While buying a new phone or while extending your phone’s contract, there is even a bigger fee. Then you have the early-termination fee which can run into several dollars.

Reason #3: Scarcity of unlimited data plans

Few years back, the service providers were comfortable enough with offering unlimited data plans but this step was taken by them way before they even realized that the cell phone users will voraciously use data. Now, most of them have capped data plans and they even charge the customers for crossing their daily limit. There are some others which don’t cap the limit but they reduce the speeds whenever users hit the threshold. These caps even offer companies with a good opportunity for making money.

Reason #4: There’s not enough data

For the Americans, the very thought of using data within a limit is bewildering and hence it is very easy to cross the cap. Even if the service providers offer you 300 MB, what would that mean to you? When you have High-Definition movies on the internet and hours of Pandora to stream, who would even think of dealing with the different data caps? The brand new phones are actually powerful computers and hence they consume more data as compared to their predecessors.

Reason #5: People are ditching their landlines

Maintaining your landline and your cell phone can get a bit too costly and hence to save costs, most of the households are ditching their landlines. This is being yet another cause of soaring cell phone bills, as per the National Health Interview Survey. Among the houses which still have their landline and mobile phones, more than third of them don’t ever use their landlines.

So, now that you know the reasons behind your soaring cell phone bills, it’s high time to take action against it. Use prepaid calling cards or other internet calling options to stop bleeding due to soaring cell phone bills.