From 490 yen per month! Since it's spring, I thought of a way to make my child's mobile phone payment cheaper (1/3)

　Despite the impact of the new coronavirus, the new semester will come in April. Some children will debut mobile phones this spring, and there will also be boys and girls with smartphones. Nonetheless, from the perspective of parents who actually pay the fees, they would like to have it at a low cost if possible, and they would like to choose a device with a full range of management functions that can limit how their children use it.

　Therefore, I would like to think about a cheap line that can be used for children.

DoCoMo's "Kids Keitai Plan" can be contracted for 500 yen per month as a sub line of the parent line of DoCoMo users. Moreover, calls between family members are free, and functions such as checking the location from the parent's smartphone can be used.

If the parent is a parent with one of the three major carriers, a child's mobile phone from the same carrier would be a better choice

　First, if the child is an elementary school student, the mobile phone without internet functionality should be specified as a mobile phone that can be brought to school. It is often done. As a matter of fact, it will be a child's phone offered by a major carrier.

　Children's mobile phones are available from the three major carriers, but apart from the model price, it is a cheap service of about 500 yen per month, and optional services such as GPS location and content for children There are also various benefits such as the provision of

　Only DoCoMo has a condition that parents must be DoCoMo users as well, but even with au and Softbank, which can be contracted independently, search services and free calls with children must be used as a set. Hard to get benefits.

In addition, it is often not possible to apply for a mobile phone billing plan for children without a dedicated model, but there are cases where the terminal is offered at a significant bargain price at the sales site, so there is virtually no need to pay for the terminal. You can start using it. In other words, children's mobile phones have a low initial cost and a low monthly fee.

How parents can get a child's mobile phone cheaply even with a cheap SIM

　If you are already using a cheap SIM, you may think of using a cheap SIM for your child's mobile phone. Actually, in the previous installment of this series ("Isn't it really a good deal? Using a cheap SIM for children's mobile phones"), I tried inserting a docomo MVNO cheap SIM into a child's mobile phone F-03J, and actually could be used for

DoCoMo's children's mobile phone F-03J can be purchased cheaply on the second-hand market, but the machine is a FOMA terminal and new contracts will be closed on March 31 this year. Even if you use it with a cheap SIM, there is not much merit

　F-03J also supports SIM unlocking, so you may be able to use it with a cheap Softbank MVNO SIM. When I tried it, it was possible to use Y!mobile's smartphone SIM, and I could use a flat rate call. In addition, FOMA children's mobile phones will no longer accept new applications on March 31, 2020, so it is possible to obtain unused second-hand mobile phones at the 1000 yen level.

　However, even with a cheap SIM, it is possible to make voice calls and it seems to be possible to use it at a minimum. The cheapest class, such as 1100 yen per month with a plan. If you have a cheap SIM, you can add a voice SIM with a secondary line, but voice SIM costs at least 700 yen, and basically there is no free call.

If parents still want to prepare a child's mobile phone without being bound by a carrier, there is also a method of using an au or Softbank mobile phone for children, which requires a compatible model but can be contracted independently. GPS location search and unlimited free calls cannot be used unless the parents are on the same carrier, but it is more advantageous than forcing a cheap SIM into a child's mobile phone. In addition, Softbank is 10 yen cheaper, at 490 yen per month, and there is no contract period, and it comes with free calls for up to 5 minutes.

　Nevertheless, since GPS search services cannot be used on a single line and the important role of a child's mobile phone cannot be achieved, it seems better for parents to switch to one of the three major carriers and use the same carrier.