Cell Phone (somewhat OT)

Buy a pre-paid phone and don't register it until it's needed?

You don't really think a carrier is going to take you on as a customer in the off-chance that you *may* make a call this year?

Those are called prepaid cellular. I use PagePlus:

I'm paying 50 cents per month, plus about 5 cents per minute. It uses the Verizon system. Minutes expire every 90 days.

AT&T has their GoPhone sevice that does what you want. No charge if you don't use it, but verrrrrry expensive per minute when you do. Best plan for emergencies is where you pay $3 per *DAY* for every day that you use it. Having the phone available and not running out of minutes during an emergency is better than loading the phone full of estimated minutes and running out of minutes.

Other pre-paid vendors:

Watch out for minimum monthly charges and expiring minutes.

Consumer Cellular isn't exactly what you've asked for but it may be close enough. They have a $10/month zero minutes plan that's pay-as-you go ($.25/minute).

We have VirginMobile phones on 90-day top-up. You pay $15 every 90 days (so it's slightly above $5/mo) and that gives you 25-30 mins of talk time per month. You can top-up some more in case you do become stranded and decide to have a long chat with an old girlfriend :-)

I don't think it can get much cheaper than that. After all, the company has to pay to keep your phone number and taxes and all that.

You can use ARN (American Roaming Network) for outgoing calls only. You don't get a phone number.

You buy a PIN, that's good for a year, for $10. You need to buy an unregistered CDMA phone in order to use the service.

Next cheapest is Pageplus which will cost you $10 every 120 days (about $2.50/month), but at least you get a phone number.

Consumer Cellular is about the biggest ripoff in prepaid.

For $10 every four months on Pageplus (Verizon MVNO) you get 80 minutes ($10 buys you 100 minutes, but there is a 50¢/month fee so you end up with $8/80 minutes).

Avoid Virgin Mobile at all costs. Not only is it very expensive for prepaid, there is absolutely no roaming allowed off of Sprint's very geographically limited network (other than 911 calls). It's a very poor choice as an emergency phone unless you never leave urban areas, and it's quite expensive compared to other prepaid providers.

There was a rumor that Virgin was going to start allowing off-network roaming (at extra cost) but it did not happen. "Virgin Mobile USA Hi everyone. I need to clarify comments about roaming on Virgin Mobile. Roaming is not available. We did recently update our terms and conditions (effective 7/1/12) in order to make our language more consistent with Sprint?s. There is a new reference to roaming, but we have no plans to add roaming at this time."

Expensive? At about five bucks a month? Since all those Dollar translate into minutes that is 18c/min on my plan, 20c on newer ones. They roll over forever so now I've piled up a whopping 13h of talk time. Some day they can write on my grave marker "And he had 15,672 minutes left on his cell" :-)

No roaming but it's on the Sprint network. Nothing "very limited" about that. Case in point, it has happened numerous times that seasoned biz folks with fancy iPhone had to ask me if they could make a quick call from my little phone because ... gasp ... _they_ had no coverage.

$10 /month for Tracfone. That includes 30 minutes, that roll over to next month if you don't use them.

-- Roberto Waltman

Y'er right. It's now $2/day. It was $3/day about a year ago when I was on the service. However, you now have to buy a $25 refill card in order to start the service. There's also a one time activation fee. The AT&T site does not show an amount. AT&T also deducts applicable taxes monthly from the account, which do tend to add up.

As long as the credit card used to pay the bill is active, or you have money left from a refill card, the service will be there. I had it for about a year, made exactly one call, and then passed the phone to a friend for emergencies. The only gotcha is that you have to buy a GoPhone from some AT&T or some retail outfit and keep some money in the account:

I was all set to pull the trigger on pageplus when I found that the nearest available phone number was in the next state. I wouldn't have been able to call my own phone.

Our cell numbers are from 1200 miles away. ;-) The only problem I've had was the gate at my apartment required a local phone number to operate the entrance gate remotely. I didn't expect any company (just a place to crash during the week) so I didn't bother with it.

I have a T-mobile prepaid. You must reup every 90 days for $10 (~33c/min) or initial year $100 (1000 min) and then $10/year.

-- A host is a host from coast to snipped-for-privacy@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

I have a dumb Tracphone; comes with 30 minutes (usually doubled). If you do not use them, they do not diminish with time. BUT you get so many "service hours" which appears to be in the region of a year, at which time you renew minutes to get more service hours.

Any current model cell phone should dial 911 without a active account. It was part of the FCC rules. Not that I'd want to depend on that.

I have Boost mobile, and they have a 35$ a month account.

I use their 50$ a month unlimited, runs on the Sprint backbone.

I get good service everywhere but Florida, West Virgina and Cleveland, Ohio. Everything South of Cleveland is fine.

Steve

Boost's iDEN coverage (Nextel) is horrible (as is Nextel in general) but now Boost is also offering CDMA service on Sprint's native network, and it's a good deal. Unfortunately, Boost has the same coverage issue as Virgin, you aren't allowed to use other carrier's networks, even at extra cost. I don't understand why Sprint doesn't take advantage of a revenue generating possibility and allow roaming at extra cost on their prepaid services (well I do have an idea why they don't want to do this).

I recall being at the Anchorage airport in the mid 2000's and the guy next to me on the curb was trying to make a call on his Nextel phone. Alaska has no Nextel service in the entire state so he was out of luck. He said he really needed a phone while he was in Alaska (on business) so I suggested that he go buy a Tracfone at Walmart. Back then, TDMA and AMPS were the dominant networks in Alaska and CDMA was available in cities and towns, but not between them. I could use AMPS on my Verizon CDMA/AMPS phone. AMPS coverage was a necessity because Alaska is so vast and AMPS covers larger areas with fewer cells due to its higher power radios.

Best

minutes

estimated

Not even that good. The prepaid minutes age out depending on how many = you bought but never longer than one year. That's why i dumped them.

?-(