The issue is that I'm try to balance low cost with maximum simplicity. I just got off the phone with her trying to set up her Republic phone and she couldn't even complete the basic task of setting up the device. She had a stroke some years back, and tasks like this are incredibly challenging for her.
So we might wind up going back to a landline for her. She has one of those so-called Obama-phones, but it's not meeting her needs. She's been using landlines for all of her 70 years, so I think that might wind up being the most user friendly technology for her.
Here's the deal... if she's home most of the time anyway, it would probably be best to go with basic lifeline home phone service. If they don't provide sufficient/any long distance for the money, your best (and one of the cheapest long distance per minute) options is
Pioneer Telephone with rates as low as 1.9-3.25¢/minute (trust me, those are excellent long distance rates for landline). They do offer local phone services in certain areas as well, so it might be worth investigating that, too. Also, don't forget to place a
PIC freeze on the phone line to prevent carrier slamming after everything is set up.
If for whatever reason you can't get away for under $20/month after taxes going landline (don't see that realistically happening without going lifeline service), there are other options that'll let you bridge a home phone to the GSM mobile network for cheap, as well.... but you'll have to go with an AT&T MVNO to make it happen due to the inability to carrier unlock the equipment. Fortunately, I already covered the cheapest per minute AT&T MVNO options available in my previous post, so you're golden there. If you're curious about this particular path, the device in question to look for is the
ZTE WF720, stuff an AT&T MVNO SIM card in, and connect up a home phone she's used to.
All this said, I am curious to know how the "Obama-phone" is not meeting her needs beyond the minute allotment as it sounds like she's having no trouble making and receiving calls currently. (For the record, it's just an extension of the lifeline service, and technically if you want to blame a specific president, it's more a "Bush-phone" if we must drag people's names into it.) Supposedly, all carriers should permit carrier unlocking for phones, but many smaller outfits (especially on the mobile lifeline end - many lifeline MVNOs are some of the scummiest, most corrupt providers out there) don't actually make good on this and are just pumping the federal lifeline service for a quick buck. That said, depending on the carrier and network, it might be possible to continue using the existing mobile phone with another MVNO with minimal fuss, even and especially the AT&T MVNOs Puretalk USA and Airvoice as previously mentioned if the carrier you're dealing with is an AT&T MVNO itself. We can explore this path as well, but I'd need more details first (phone model, current carrier, etc.).
If she's able to work out a basic flip phone anyway, though... again, the LG A380 would be a reasonably easy to use choice so long as you set it to Senior Mode. The key with dealing with this situation is ease of use and a reasonably large physical keypad... the closer it resembles and operates like a cordless home phone in interface, the better. You venture beyond that (like with smartphones that have no physical buttons), you're just making everyone's life more difficult.