In the report you say:

3) The average cost for wireless service for one line accounts was $37.15 and $80.45 for 2 line accounts.
and
6) Minutes used by different user groups show a major discrepancy in calling patterns.On average, all customers made 408 minutes of use.

So to find an average cost:
If everybody was paying the $80.45 for 2-line accounts, $80.45/408 = $0.19
If everybody was paying the $37.15 for a 1-line account, $37.14/408 = $0.09.

That means that the average cost per minute is no less than 9 cents and no greater than 19 cents.

So how do you come up with this item:
4) Cost per minute can be outrageous. Doing the simplest of calculations – dividing
the total cost by the number of minutes, we find that the average ‘account’ is
paying $3.02 a minute.

I'm only a rocket scientist, but I think you're doing your math wrong.

Ready, fire aim. My bad.

Well, even I can make a mistake from time to time. Sure did here!

Thought you banned my comments, but after firing off an angry comment or two, I see that you did not. You did the right thing, and I must humbly apologize for my rabid, rapid response.

Now, If you'lls fess up that your study is as bogus as they come, we can call it even!

Since full disclosure suddenly is of interest to you, consider this: I have never marketed cell phone service. Never.

They were my competitors! Your bogus study HELPS my business by grossly overstating the cost of cell phone service.

But facts like that are not of interest to you.

Interesting deletion of my posts. Show me any instance in my posts where I "advertised" my business or my companies. You can't. I didn't. I specifically didn't mention my profession, my business, or seek business from others.

What you are saying is that you won't allow vendors to comment on your attacks on vendors. Amazing, but that's the standard liberal mentality today.

But I'm not surprised you ban me from your comments section. After all, this disastrous study badly damaged the credibility of your bogus "consumer advocacy" outfit.

Missing the point thinks that 30 cents a minute (closer to the real figure than the bogus UCAN $3 figure) is far higher than the 10 cents a minute cell phone companies claim you get, and accuses cell phone companies of misrepresentation. But you don't have to be a math wiz to realize that the cost per minute on a fixed cost plan is directly related to your usage. If you pay $40 and use only 40 minutes, you'll pay a dollar a minute. If you have the same plan and use 400 minutes, it's 10 cents a minute. And let's not forget text messaging -- the new form of "calling" which UCAN failed to consider (except in the size of the bill).

Clearly, one should buy the plan that best fits your usage (or lack of usage). For infrequent users, prepaid phones are usually a better choice.

But don't blame the cell phone companies for not picking the right plan -- blame the ill-educated consumer who lacks the rudimentary math skills to make a reasonable decision. If you like, blame our schools for not teaching 3rd grade arithmetic. But don't blame the cell phone companies for hiding the facts -- while the taxes certainly complicate the matter, the charges are there for all to see.

Although the calculations are quite suspect, many people here miss the point entirely.

As I read through the posts I noticed a lot of people coming to a 30-47c per minute average conclusion. Yes, $3 is outrageous, but I think 30c per minute is outrageous too.
We are promised low call rates to compensate for the fact that we sign (up to two year) contracts, yet it is obvious that we are being suckered. On prepaid you can get per minute rates of 10c, anytime, anywhere. No hidden fees, no roaming or other charges. You only pay for what you use. If you want to use it more you can top up at the same low rate. No overage charges.
Yes, UCAN needs to check the figures. But they are on your side, highlighting an issue. Is your cell carrier on your side?

You bold this bit, "- The average cost for a wireless call is $3.02 per minute. "

But that's false by your own accounting. It's more like, "Among a self-selected group of UCAN members who responded to a survey, including an average cost of $20/minute for the 30% of respondents who never use their phone, the average user paid $3.02/minute for cell phone use."

But that wouldn't make a good headline, would it? What's really a shame is there MIGHT be some good information in the report about cost increases and incorrect taxing, but all that is lost as UCAN has foolishly chosen to highlight an obviously deceptive number about the average cost of a cell phone call. You're now the boy who cried wolf.

Before you even consider the methodology and what they took into account, consider a decimal error:

(I am using the numbers from the Christian Science Monitor article as UCAN have taken the pdf off of the site, which presumably contains the errors)

So with the average bill of $37.15, and average minute cost of $3.02, it appears that the average person only uses 12.3 minutes a month. Its a surprise that people would get a phone at all if they only needed it 12 minutes a month. The good news that comes out of this survey is that it appears that everyone who has a cell phone has free data and texts as their entire bill goes to cost of minutes.

It would make more sense (and be more coherent) if they meant the average minute cost was $.30. That would fit in perfectly with the claim that people only use 32% of their minutes which are advertised at '10 cents a minute'. Does a misplaced decimal look like the problem? That is, of course, even before you consider everyones objection about which minutes to count (on peak, off peak, family plans, bundles, free calls, etc), texts, data, etc.

It is shocking that anyone with a calculator could make such mistakes. This is a very poor show from a consumer advocacy group. It is irresponsible, incorrect and entirely too sensational.

Could someone tell me how to get to the Study. Where is the STUDY

This "study" apparently avoids two other aspects: 1. It does not count the text messages. This is a new, often preferred method of communication that is in essence a new form of "calling." But I bet the study included the text message COST in their analysis. 2. More and more people are figuring out that they no longer need a land line. The degradation in call quality and "dropped" calls notwithstanding, for many cell phone users, land lines are superfluous. Ask young people how many of them have land lines in this day and age. That cost savings is ignored.

Remember, UCAN is a far-left wing outfit that favors nationalization of the utilities (though they seldom admit it). This is a bogus study. The sample size is drawn from UCAN fans -- low income retired lefties sporting Che Guevara T-shirts. It is no way reflects the broader spectrum of cell phone users. And every critic on this board know it.

Personally, I'm delighted with the "study." It clearly exposes the bias and incompetence of UCAN and its staff. Thanks, Michael Shames for this shameful piece of propaganda. Keep 'em coming!!

This is satire right? You had The Onion writers write this for you? Wait, no? You actually though anyone other that a blithering idiot would believe this tome of nonsense? Wow.

Grow up

I was lead here by another bolded, highlighted enlightenment site. A quick look shows you have no idea what you're talking about.
Goodbye

OK, I read the report. I have to say, the headline number on there and the calculations supporting it make me suspicious of the whole affair. UCAN apparently found a survey population where 30% of the customers made less than 10 minutes of calls each month! That's astounding, not credible, and points to a pretty serious problem of selection bias.

While the selection bias made evident by that statistic poisons the study, it's also not very interesting to know how much per minute those rare callers pay. Obviously people using less than than 10 minutes/month do not care about the per minute cost-- they just want the phone as an emergency aid. And I question the wisdom of someone paying $40/month for plan when they can get a pre-paid phone for $5/month.

So not only is the reporting sloppy and the calculations and headlines intentionally misleading, but it's also clear that the authors of the report engaged in some clearly concerted selection bias, as they struggled to find a sample population whereby 30% of the respondents basically NEVER use their phone.

Just silly.

The methodology is that they only used people's "anytime" minutes, and didn't factor in the "unlimited mobile-to-moble and night/weekend" minutes most people have. Apparently they think those aren't accounted for in the price of a cell phone plan.

Yes, if you ONLY factor in the anytime minutes, my wife and I use about 100 per month. If you factor in EVERYTHING it's about 600 per month... and I promise you we're not spending $1800 per month on cell phone usage!

this is really sad. UCAN lost a lot of credibility today. The numbers obviously make no sense.

Since there seems to be confusion I should explain our methodolgy with more detail.

The study used a simple formula to examine the cost per minute -- total costs divided by the total minutes.

And we did this analysis by 'accounts', not just by adding all of the phone customers together. --- In our survey we found that about 1/3 of single line accounts make less than 10 minutes of calls -- -and they can have costs for their plan from $16.95 to $39.99 --- so, if a customer is making 5 calls and paying $43.00 counting all of the extra charges, the cost per minute is --- $8.60 a minute.

The FCC, for example, claims that a 1 minute call for wireless is about $.06 a minute. What the FCC does not examine is the total costs as well as averaging ALL users with all calls -- so, families making over 1000 minutes drown out the data for hundreds of low end customers.

By examining accounts, as well as break outs of the number of customers by call volume, the difference is a better representation of every customer; not simply the high volume customers.

What UCAN and Teletruth are proposing is to have a per-minute box on both wireless as well as long distance, which also have the same problem. With AT&T's long distance service, we found that over 10% of the population pays over $1.00 a minute because of plan fees, etc... they make few calls but pay $10-$12 a month.

Bruce Kushnick, Teletruth

I think they divided average number of minutes used by the average cost, which may yield a number in the range of $3.00/minute. The correct division would instead be cost by used minutes, which would yield something closer to $.30. For example, I pay $30 a month (for two phones with 300 shared minutes, including taxes!). We use on average about 100 of those minutes. If you divide used minutes by cost you get $3.33/minute. If however you divide cost by used minutes you get $.30/minute, which is the correct result.

At the end of my last post I guess I meant the calculation in the post directly before mine, not 7 before mine.

I agree with all that was said above except that I think you are doing the math incorrectly. Remember that there are two people on a phone call so really the cost per minute is paid by two people. That means an average of $1.50 per minute per person. This still is ridiculous. For the $100 plan that means 66 minutes per month, which is just as unlikely as the 30 minute calculation stated in the post about 7 ahead of this one. Something is definitely wrong here. Or we are all missing something. Of course, the methodology is important for us to know.

I agree with those who wrote before me. $3 per minute is in no way accurate. When you remember that this is an average, it makes it even more ridiculous. $3 per minute means that the average person with a $100 per month bill only talks for 30 minutes. That, in itself, is wildly low -- as some calls alone last that long. But, because this is an average, for every person who has a $100 monthly bill and talks 60 minutes a month (again, wildly low) there is soneone who only talks for 1 minute per month (impossible and stupid for having such a large bill). I might believe 30 cents per minute is the average, which would mean the author got the decimal place wrong, but not $3 per minute.

If, the readers with level heads, are wrong, I ask the author to publish the data and methodology to crunch the numbers to support this astonishing claim.

it has got to be a flawed study.... there is no way the average cell phone call costs over $3 a minute. Those responsible for the study and those that allowed for this article to be published need to be accountable for their "facts".

I looked over the report and am utterly confused by their calculations. At $3/minute your bill would be $100 if you talked to 33 minutes? Everyone talks for more than 33 minutes and I would assume almost all have bills less than $100. I would love an explanation