Carrying both a 'berry for business and a personal cell phone, reducing costs

This is the situation I am in. Work requires me to carry a BlackBerry to get my email. It's an AT&T 8800 hooked into a BES. It has unlimited data (of course) but no voice. Work will not even allow voice on the 'berries. AT&T even offers 'split billing' to enterprise customers where you can put your personal number on the phone. Work will not allow that either.

So I end up carrying two phones around all the time. My 8800, and my personal cell phone, a free LG from AT&T with the 450 minute plan with rollover.

Since I can't seem to rectify the situation (I am the BES admin and have lots of knowledge about ways we could get around the problem, but work is not interested) I am looking to reduce the costs on my personal cell phone, since I will always use the BlackBerry for data needs. I went $14.50 over last month on my personal phone with text messaging. But I have tons of rollover minutes, something around 2500, so clearly I never use all my minutes.

I am thinking about a pay as you go plan for my personal usage. I know it will be more expensive per minute, but the thing is, if I can't use all my minutes now and they expire from my rollover balance, then it doesn't do me any good. What I do need is lots of text messages, or at least more than 100 for $3.00 like on AT&T.

any suggestions?

Yeah...my company is getting me an 8310 for work to replace the "Old Blue" I had...now I'll look like a gunslinger with two holsters. The work BB will be Titanium, and my personal one is Crimson, so I'll easily be able to tell them apart. :cool:

Originally Posted by TampaDude

Yeah...my company is getting me an 8310 for work to replace the "Old Blue" I had...now I'll look like a gunslinger with two holsters. The work BB will be Titanium, and my personal one is Crimson, so I'll easily be able to tell them apart. :cool:

You're doing exactly what I don't want to do. lol....

Throw the BB at the head of the supervisors that have made such an inconvenient decision for you.

Actually it seems common to carry 2 phones these days. One business the other personal. The one for business probably has some IT policies in place that would greatly affect it being used as a personal device... IMO.

Reading what the OP said, you want to use your business phone as your personal phone to cut down on expense? Correct me if I am mistaken, but you want your job to pay your bill- in a round the bout way?

Originally Posted by ScandaLeX

Actually it seems common to carry 2 phones these days. One business the other personal. The one for business probably has some IT policies in place that would greatly affect it being used as a personal device... IMO.

Absolutely agreed HOWEVER, not to let him use the voice in the split billing if he is willing to live with the potential restrictions and monitoring seems horribly odd to me. Not to mention the cancer lawsuits waiting to happen (regardless of the amounts of bunk on the topic).