For a person who wants very low-cost, no-frills cellphone service, I understand that the cheapest is a disposable phone, such as those sold at Walmart and other retailers. Maintaining cellphone service this way might cost $7-$10 a month.
Do such phones work everywhere there’s cell service, or are such phones locked into a particular carrier? For example, will a disposable bought in Los Angeles work in other cities and states?
Need burner fast?
While they are not necessarily locked into a carrier, they may be. First of all in the United States phones are generally made to work either with a CDMA carrier (Verizon or Sprint) or a GSM carrier (AT&T or T Mobile). You can’t use the same phone for AT&T and Verizon. If your phone is unlocked, you can switch within the group. When dealing with the smaller carriers you need to find out if it is GSM or CDMA. Additionally, some of them use different frequencies and your phone may not be compatible. Your best bet in going this route is to get a phone with one of the biggest providers (AT&T or Verizon). In any of the large metro areas, either should do well. Verizon has the edge overall. The deciding factor is usually whether you can get a good signal in your home.
Also, it is not the phone itself that keeps the service cheap, but the plan you buy. I assume you are talking about prepaid plans. You can use those plans with any phone.
What about Tracfone–would I be safe with them? I do not need anything “smart”–need only voice communication while visiting different cities, mainly in western USA–
The best way to find out if Tracfone will work for you is to go to their website and look at their coverage maps. If they sell their phones in stores near you, then chances are they’ll work in your area.
I have a disposable cell phone on the Sprint network that I bought from Walgreens years ago. I understand that the particular phone/plan that I have is no longer available, but it looks like something similar should still be available from Walmart and other retailers.
My phone works fine anywhere I have tried it in the U.S., including California, Virginia, and New York (I’m assuming there was Sprint coverage in all of my locations).
On a phone like this, you should definitely make sure to check the fine print – you may need to add money at specific intervals or use the phone a certain amount to keep it active, and there may also be a limit on how much money you can add to the prepayment plan. Just make sure you know what the rules are before you purchase. They can also change the rules along the way, since these phones are not expected to be kept for very long (I know that the instant I mess something up and lose access to my phone, I can never get it back).
One issue with Tracfone (and it is a minor one) is that the phone they give you will only work with Tracfone. My wife has Tracfone and it works fine. As spoilervirgin pointed out, you need to pay attention to the payment plan. Minutes roll over, but not if you allow them to expire. My wife is on an auto refill plan that gives her 60 minutes every 90 days (about $20). That is about the cheapest way to go if you don’t use more than the 60 minutes (since the minutes roll over you will have more minutes for emergencies as time goes by).
Tracfone does not have its own network, but buys access from other providers.
My daughter uses Tracfone and a dumb phone and we are very happy with it. We are on an auto payment of $10 per month which adds some random number of calls and texts. The phone she got has lifetime triple minutes, which is something most of their phones/plans offer. She never uses a months allotment and they roll over infinitely. She could probably talk on the thing non-stop for the next month at this point and still not run out of minutes.
My wife and I use Tracfone, and it works for us. The last time I renewed, I got 1200 minutes, 1200 texts, and 1200 MB data for two years for $150. My phone is an obsolescent LG Android smartphone, but it’s good enough for me. I might need more minutes, but I’ve barely touched the data plan, preferring to use the phone where there’s wifi.
Coverage is acceptable in cities, but there are a lot of dead zones in the rural West. The phone doesn’t work in Canada.
Tracfone has horrible customer service, but as long as you don’t need to talk to a human being, it’s just fine, in my experience.
Tracphone works well enough for me. Works pretty much where any other phone would I guess. I rarely use it.
I’ve used a Tracfone for years. The main downside to Tracfone is they’ve sourced their customer service overseas and not bothered to teach them English.
One trick to Tracfone is some of the phone model numbers will give you a clue as to which network they run on. For instance, the LG 305c is a CDMA phone that runs on Verizon. A LG 306G is a GSM phone that runs on either T-Mobile or AT&T, depending on the sim card it comes with.
Here’s a forum dedicated to Tracfones:
We’ve had T-Mobile cheap phones for the kids for about 6-7 years. Slightly better coverage (I think) than Tracfone. The plan we had (which is now discontinued, boo) would let you add 10 dollars or more periodically - and that 10 bucks was good for up to 3 months (if you didn’t add more money, anything left would expire). When we’d added a total of a hundred dollars, that bumped the expiration out to a year - so basically we added about 10-15 bucks a year to keep them active (my weird kids barely used theirs!).
Sadly, when we ported the one remaining phone number over to the family’s Verizon plan, T-Mobile terminated the remaining money and wouldn’t let us re-up on that plan. We needed to activate the phone again for a month this summer and the best we could do was a plan that charges 3 dollars a month minimum.
You can port any Verizon post-paid phone over to PagePlus. The absolute cheapest plan on PagePlus requires you to add $10 every 90 days. The absolute cheapest annual plan is $80 for 365 days.
Verizon pre-paid phones must have been active on Verizon for 6 months.
PagePlus is an MVNO on the Verizon network and your phones will continue to operate over Verizon, but you will not be a Verizon customer.
Tracfones run on T-Mobile, AT&T or Verizon depending on the phone, and may roam depending on the phone. You may have had better service locally on T-Mobile, but overall AT&T or Verizon have much better coverage than T-Mobile.
I just bought a Tracfone Alcatel OneTouch A206G w/double minutes, for $5; then a 90-day plan, 60-minutes x 2= 120-minutes, for $20.
For low-budget minimal needs, seems a great deal–
Thx for info–