I found the most affordable program & phone was through
Net 10. No monthly fee & 10 cents a minute no matter where you are in the US. Texting, I think, is 5cents. Doesn't matter because it's useless for me.
Last month they implemented more payment options. The cheapest is 150 minutes & 30 days for $15. I liked the 600 minutes & 120 days of service for $60. When I buy airtime early, it's added to the original expiration date so I don't lose any accumulated time or minutes.
I bought my first Net 10 phone last July. When the Motorola refused to acknowledge service at 3 months old, Net10 happily sent me an upgraded new phone + credited the unused time of 600 minutes AND added 300 minutes for my 'inconvience'. :thumbsup:
I purchased a Nokia phone 2 months ago for dh at Walmart. For $40 he got the phone, 300 minutes & 60 days use. He's happy & so is his work to not always contact me. He also has clear reception.
After using very reasonable prepayment cards in Germany for around $15 for 4 hours, I refuse to commit to the ridiculous US monthly fee of $40+ for telephone service! It's outrageous, especially since we're all on analogue, not clear digital phones. All those bells & whistles don't make up for poor audio reception and a considerably lighter wallet.
Net10 is through the same company as
TracFone. It's a little more money, but has more variety in phones & payment programs. Both have greatly improved their customer service in the last year. No more echo when I talk with India
Reason why I'm explaining in detail is that I've surprised a lot of people, including salesclerks, about how little my excellent service costs. I've been in the boonies of TX and still I get reception. So for someone who doesn't yak a huge amount of time on the phone and wants to pay $15 monthly for cell phone access, it's the best bargain around (Even better than Virgin. I checked them out too
)