For those of you who don't use phone very often, how much do you pay monthly?

[Vision67]

My wife is an infrequent cell phone user.

She uses a hand me down iPhone 5 on a Trac Fone account. It costs just $95 per year to maintain the account. Here, they use the Verizon network and sell phone minutes/data at very cheap prices.

When you use the phone on wi-fi the use is free. It's using data from wi-fi, not your cellular stream.

You can load their app on the phone to see how many minutes/days are left in your account. They roll over and are never cancelled.

To get on Trac fone, buy the micro sim card at Wal-Mart for the phone. This was the cheapest deal we could find and I've been using Trac Fone for many years with few problems.

[snowmountains]

Problem with the lesser known phone companies is that their network may be insufficient, so there may be much more signal problem as opposed to, say, Verizon or AT&T (I seem to have heard those two have the best signals?).

[noodlecat]

Originally Posted by snowmountains

Problem with the lesser known phone companies is that their network may be insufficient, so there may be much more signal problem as opposed to, say, Verizon or AT&T (I seem to have heard those two have the best signals?).

The way I understand it, all of the actual phone towers are owned by the Big 4 companies (Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint), with only a handful being owned by other companies such as US Cellular. The Big 4 then resell their network airtime to other companies, such as Tracfone, Cricket, Straight Talk, MetroPCS, Boost, Virgin Mobile, Boom!, Page Plus, etc, also known as MVNOs.

I have my phone on Tracfone, using the Verizon network. Tracfone also offers the AT&T and T-Mobile networks.

[EAID]

Originally Posted by noodlecat

For VOIP "landline" I have Ooma — $100 one-time purchase for the box then pay just taxes each month (~$4) or pay taxes plus $10 for their premier service (includes wildcard blacklisting and NoMoRobo, well worth it).

For cell service, I have a BYO phone on Tracfone/Verizon. I started out with 1200 min/1200 text/1.2 gig and one year service time for $100 and then accumulated more minutes that I'm depleting slowly, so I just use what I have already and once a year I purchase one year of service time for $50. Occasionally I buy a card for either 1000 texts ($5) or 1 gig data ($10), maybe once or twice a year.

My husband and I do the same thing. Ooma to replace our landline and Tracfone/Verizon for cell. I still love having a home phone with multiple handsets throughout the house and garage. And with Ooma premier I can have another home phone number that allows my 86 year old mother to dial easily as I chose one in her area code.