I've been doing some research on what the best way to keep a cell phone number active with minimal usage and I wanted to get feedback from the group as well as see if there's anything I'm missing. This is useful if, for example, one is slow-traveling overseas, or moving abroad for a year or two, but wants to keep their cell phone number. An internet search suggests porting to VoIP, but that eliminates the ability to use the number as a cell phone if you travel back to the US. The priority then is minimizing costs while maximizing the time before your stored value expires. I think this pretty much eliminates any postpaid plan, and any plan that includes anything every month. So, using I.P. Daley's Superguide, I have a few data points:
- Airvoice:
$10 cards expire after 90 days, so it would be ~$40 per year to keep active. $20 cards expire after 120 days and $30 cards expire after 150 days.
Puretalk:
It looks like the minimum plan is $10 / month.
Ting:
Plan minimum of $6 / month, plus taxes and fees.
Consumer Cellular:
Minimum plan is $10 / month.
Virgin Mobile:
Is the lowest plan really $20 per month? That's the cheapest I could find on their "payLo plan."
EcoMobile:
The smallest refill I saw was $10, and it expired after 30 days.
H2O Wireless:
Smallest refill is $10, expires after 90 days, also has $100 refill that lasts 1 year.
AT&T GoPhone looks like there's a $10/month or $100/year minimum, although this isn't terribly clear and I'm not positive about it.
Based on these results, it looks like AirVoice and H2O wireless have the best options at $10 for a card lasting 3 months. Anyone know of any better solutions?