A specific verizon cell phone question

[kib]

This may be my Depressing Purchase of 2014, but I'm hoping not.  My personal phone is a (oh GIANT face punch) Samsung Note II, with Verizon - bang bang bang.  Actually I adore the phone and don't regret buying it, it's Verizon I can't abide.  I just finally got the bill down from $90 to $60, please pass the Cristal.  My contract will expire in a couple of months.  DH's phone is now through Republic Wireless and he's really happy with it, but they won't let you crack and transfer a phone.  My question is whether there is another cheapo carrier that will allow me to somehow crack a Verizon phone.  My understanding is that Verizon phones are somehow different from others, but beyond that I'm clueless about whether I could get someone to jailbreak it and make it compatible with a much less expensive plan.  Anyone know 1. can I do that and 2. compatible with which other carrier?  I will probably go with RW and a new phone if I can't do this, but I'd sure like to hear it's possible to retain this $$$$$$ gadget in a useful way.

[Shade00]

You can take your Verizon Note II to Page Plus and retain full LTE functionality. Plans start at $29.95 for 1200 minutes/3000 texts/500mb of data and go up. Next step is unlimited talk/text/1gb of data for $39.95. You can get these refills for 10% off at several online dealers, making them ~$27 and ~$36.

I believe the Note II is unlocked for use on domestic GSM carriers, so you could take it to T-Mobile or AT&T, but you will not get LTE on those networks. You will get HSPA+ anywhere on AT&T but EDGE in some places on T-Mobile.

Hard to recommend anything other than Page Plus for that phone unless you have very, very low usage (i.e. only minutes less than 250/month).

[Rube]

A VZW iPhone 5 will work with T-Mobile. Not sure about anything else.

[Daley]

I will probably go with RW and a new phone if I can't do this, but I'd sure like to hear it's possible to retain this $$$$$$ gadget in a useful way.

Don't waste good money and electronics switching to Republic (again), just read the guide. As Shade pointed out, you can technically take the phone to Page Plus, and LTE is coming to Selectel (and other Verizon MVNOs) sooner than later. However, the VZW Note II, despite the carrier unlocked SIM slot, will require a third-party firmware like Cyanogenmod (IIRC) to be able to set APN settings for data with a GSM carrier.

[DeltaBond]

My husband just changed to tracfone tonight with his formerly verizon Droid x.  Tracfone checks your phone's serial numbers to see if its compatible.

[DeltaBond]

Just to add, he learned that its CDMA phones that are able to transfer over to tracfone.

[MayDay]

I recently switched to Cricket with a Verizon phone. Everything works fine on my phone except picture and group texts, which I can live without. I figured I would stick with my old phone which works fine other than a cracked screen, until it totally dies. Cricket runs 35$ a month including taxes/fees for unlimited talk/text and 1gb of data, I believe.  I don't think it's the absolute cheapest.