I want to get rid of my landline but...

 ATT just keeps raising my landline cost to the point where I am now
paying $35 just for the landline itself, and all I use it for are
local calls and to access my cheap long distance via onesuite.com. Oh,
and as I understand it I have to have GTC Telecom as my ld carrier, so
that's another $4 or so per month.

So.. I want to get rid of my landline if for no other reason than to
say FU to ATT for charging so much for it.

So what I need is a cell phone service that :
Is reliable
Has unlimited "free" minutes for long distance
Costs less than $40/month

I don't need internet or texting etc. in fact I'd like to use it with
a very cheap cell phone; I just need good reception and reliability
not the internet, texting, etc. ; though if it has texting I might
eventually use it...

Any suggestions?

I do use pagepluscellular on one old cell phone I use for emergencies
and I use Tracfone for the other but both are too expensive for "daily
home use" because my wife sometimes like to talk on the phone for
hours to her sister in Pennsylvania.

  0024d7a32ec0@8g2000prb.googlegroups.com:


Page Plus is about as cheap as you are going to get for a cell.

Do you have a decent internet connection? Consider getting
a VoIP phone service.  Magic Jack is pretty cheap at $20.00
per year. Vonage is not as cheap as they would like you to think.
Phone Power is half the price of Vonage and has better service
and features.  I've been with Phone Power for almost a year and
have no complaints.

 T-Mobile has a $40 plan that include 500 minutes a month.  If you can
get your wife to call on weekends, the minutes are free.

Also consider what her sister is using for a phone.  I added my Mom to
my plan for an additional $10/mo and we can talk anytime, as mobile to
mobile calls within the family are always free.

-Brian

 
As to MagicJack, I have one but I use it for my home business as those
calls are usually quick and local.
I have found the long distance calls on MagicJack are of generally
poor quality, much poorer than onesuite.com. As to page plus cellular,
it's cheap but I don't believe it is that cheap for long distance,
right? Also, the MagicJack is hooked to my computer and we need the
ability to take the phone into the other room when my wife is talking
for hours...

$40/month would not be bad but 500/month is not enough minutes even if
she gets free min. on weekends. She can spend 120-180 minutes on any
one day talking long distance, so I pretty much need unlimited
minutes. I'll have to see what plan her sister and niece are using...

Thanks to all for the info/recommendations.

 wrote:



I tried MagicJack, it worked for a month, then stop working.  There is no
human help available, and I tossed it as a relatively cheap lesson learned.

I use Skype voice, with a yearly sutbscription and a phone number for my
business.  Costs me $30 a year for my phone number, and $30 for unlimited
calling subscription.  So for a total of $5 a month, I can recieve and make
calls anyhwere I have my laptop and wifi (which is pretty near everywhere -
I'm a computer programmer), and have basically "free" long distance.

Call quality is very good 80% of the time, good enough 18% of the time, and
utterly unusable 2% of the time.  On the 2%, usually calling back does the
trick.  Twice in a year and a half I've had to give up and use my cell
phone.  I'm pretty happy, overal.