Being a Cell Phone blog, it would make sense that we should provide our readers with updates, on their cell phones. Right? We thought so. And of course not everyone has data plans either, this is especially true for T-Mobile users, with the lowest percentage of customers with data add-ons. We now offer our users 2 ways to stay up to date on your mobile devices, without the need for a data plan! The first is via pingie, a service that will send you an SMS whenever our RSS feed is updates (A.K.A: Whenever we publish a new post). With Pingie, you will receive an SMS message with a link to a word-only page (data required), and the title and possibly excerpt of the post. To subscribe via Pingie, use the box below:

The 2nd way comes directly from CellPhoneSignal.com, and will only be sent when we have breaking news. While on average you will not receive more than one message a day, there is of course the chance that we get in multiple breaking news tips in one day. In that case, you may receive 2 messages, or will receive one with news from multiple stories. To subscribe to CellPhoneSignal breaking news, just enter your phone number and carrier into the “Subscribe Via SMS” sidebar on the right side of the screen. Comments or Suggestions for CellPhoneSignal? Let us know in the comments below!

BillShrink.com just released a new study on U.S. Wireless Carriers. Taking a look at carriers that excel in overall price, messaging, data usage, minute usage, and average wireless bill costs around the country, BillShrink gives us a good look at the Wireless industry competition.

It looks as if this was a brief compilation of user data that was  collected over time at BillShrink.com. If you are looking for a study to help you compare user satisfaction, feature add-on prices, or best service-for-cost, don’t use this study. Meant as an informative look into the Wireless industry, you will find that it seems as if no carrier is a clear winner, although T-Mobile users clearly use the most SMS message. If you were wondering why T-Mobile was the last to the punch with their 3G network, take a look at the graph of data usage. Although it looks as if T-Mobile is trying to lose the reputation of being the last carrier to consider if you are a heavy data user by already being hard at work on their up and coming 4G network.

T-Mobile has partnered with BillShrink in the past to promote their service as the lowest costing service in the wireless industry. That said, BillShrink.com seems to operates independently, without any allegiance to a specific carrier.  Hit the jump to see the results of BillShrink’s study.

Each week we will be bringing you a featured site that will make your mobile life easier, without costing you a fortune, or anything at all! Our first featured site we bring to you is Pingie. In the wireless business, purchasing text message bundles is much more prevalent than purchasing Internet for your mobile device. That is, a larger number of wireless customers send SMS messages than the number of customers that use wireless Internet. Do you really need to have Internet and data access to view updates from your favorite news sites or blogs? Until today, that has been the industry standard; an internet based RSS feed on your phone. Our friends over at Pingie decided to move the industry forward by providing users with the ability to receive their favorite RSS feeds via SMS messages on their mobile device.

Want to give it a spin? First, make sure you have an Text Message package on your plan or you will be charged per-message. Second, head on over to Pingie.com and you will see the box below. You can then enter your information, and Pingie will provide you with options on how to receive updates, from AIM, E-mail, or SMS message on your phone.

The official explanation of what exactly Pingie does:

Why should you have to log into a website or rely on an RSS reader to find out what’s happening? Pingie will automatically alert you via text, email and/or IM virtually instantly when a website updates. 

We also go one step further by making your favorite websites information easy to access by creating a specialized text only link that is viewable on virtually any mobile device. Perfect for people with limited Internet access, but still want to be in the know!

We have been using Pingie to stay on top of development in the wireless industry, and so far it has worked great! There is under a 5 minute period between an RSS feed being updated, and receiving the SMS message (e-mails are nearly instant). Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think of Pingie!

Pingie.com

So, it’s not much of a difference if you are paying overages, but it can definitely hurt in the pocketbook. Now then, this raises a question: how can such a small amount of data cost so much for the carriers to transfer? The answer: it doesn’t. They want people to get the texting plans because it makes them more revenue upfront. Granted, why carriers feel the need to mimic one another by raising prices and abandoning that much competition I have no clue and probably never will. Nonetheless, we can only expect rates to go up even higher.

Via [Engadget Mobile]