Web Worker Daily

Small business owners are always looking for smart ways to keep costs down while achieving useful practicality.  Whether it’s running a business from your home office to avoid renting an office or completing administrative tasks sometimes best outsourced to a hired hands, business owners seek balance in profitability and efficiently running their businesses.

Additionally, US cellular service providers over the last few months have been rolling out “unlimited plans” that offer an unlimited bucket of minutes for one flat monthly rate.  In most cases, $99 a month will give you unlimited chatters a way to talk all you want.  Sprint’s plan is very attractive because it includes unlimited voice, data, and SMS.

However, T-Mobile put a new spin on the unlimited plan by offering an unlimited family plan.  For example, if you have a $99 T-Mobile unlimited plan, you can add additional lines for just $49/month that will include unmetered national voice minutes, SMS, MMS, and instant messaging.

Small business owners may not know this, but this “Family” plan is not only usable by those who share genetic bonds.  This is applicable to small business because for about $250 (not including taxes), you can have unlimited wireless minutes to run your business with.  This type of value makes the offering very competitive and could be comparable to Internet telephony (VoIP) offerings.  However, the beauty of this T-Mobile unlimited family plan is that you have access to your minutes no matter where your cell phone happens to be.

For more information about the new plans, see T-Mobile’s website.

Would you consider running your small business on cell phones?  What tradoffs can you think of?

If you’re a nomadic worker, one of the modern marvels of today’s technology is being able to hop on a wi-fi hotspot and get some work done.  This is why having a T-Mobile hotspot account has been so great for coffee-house workers.  Starbucks are virtually everywhere, especially in the United States.  Since 2001, T-Mobile has been the hotspot provider for Starbucks.

Not any more, as Glen Flieshman has pointed out. T-Mobile has been dropped by Starbucks in favor of AT&T as their wi-fi provider.  So now in addition to McDonalds, AT&T subscribers can add thousands of Starbucks to the number of locations they can get online and work.

The good news is that just for having a Starbucks card, you get 2 free hours of wi-fi a day.  Presumably this means that for just by making a purchase with your Starbucks card, you get 2 free hours of net access.

Additionally, AT&T lowered the price to $4 a day for a two hours of access, compared to T-Mobile’s $6-10 per hour charge.  AT&T is going to charge $20/month for unlimited access to wi-fi, the same as T-Mobile’s rate.  If you have AT&T DSL, you receive wi-fi access for free as a part of your monthly DSL rate.

For more info, check out AT&T’s press release.

Update: As Kevin pointed out in the comments, T-Mobile wi-fi customers will still be able to get online in Starbucks, under an agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile.  The details can be found in the press release mentioned above.