Looking back on my use of cell phones over the years, I had always counted on Tracfone and its being the most affordable option on the market with the features I needed. My ONLY available option for "High speed" internet at my home is Verizon DSL that being said anyone familiar with the rules knows that in order to have Verizon DSL you must have a landline "home" phone... because of this there was / is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY I was /am going to pay the price they want for a contracted cell phone... from any carrier regardless of if there is bloody free this and free that! The cost is too high considering what I have to pay for all ready for the same thing at home! OK! The rant is over...
Now the one thing about tracfone, and quite honestly all US based prepaid cell services DO NOT TELL YOU, is that they will not cover usage in Canada... Matter of fact, the phones that these companies use are not even capable of being used in Canada or most any other country at all PERIOD! These companies use a technology called CDMA whilst (low and behold) the rest of the civilized world widely supports the use of a technology called GSM. Now that I am making more frequent trips into Canada for Meets and Conventions I find a specific need to be in contact with my family at home while I am away and Tracfone will no longer meet my requirements. To put it simply, if you have any need to travel out of country and need cellular service, Tracfone or many of the other prepaid services may not be the best choice on the market today... and here is the catch... at least from the standpoint of purchasing one of their phones. There is a way now at least to make it possible for you to be able to BYOP or BYOD (bring your own phone / bring your own device) offered by most prepaid services by purchasing an access SIM card from them to use in your own phone.
Now there is yet a couple more needs for it to work. As I mentioned above the rest of the world relies heavily on GSM technology so obviously you need a GSM phone and NOT one that is CDMA the second requirement is that your GSM phone must be "Unlocked". Recent legislation in the states has mandated that all cell phones have the capability of being “unlocked” and yes this does include Tracfone as well although due to the difference in technology used I don’t truly see the point anyone would bother. A “Locked phone binds the use of the phone to one SIM (or Service) only and will not allow any other SIM access. In most cases to have your phone unlocked simply requires a phone call to your provider to have them give you an “Unlock code”.
Costs of unlocked phones range widely and there are good and bad out there. Chances are you can find one that is GSM and Unlocked within a price range that you are willing to pay. A quick search on Amazon will get you familiar with the names that are out there and will give you reviews of models available. Since the whole idea of getting a GSM phone is for the ability to stay connected while traveling I will add in a feature that is very handy (not required) A phone capable of dual SIM cards. This is simple way to avoid having to power off your phone and pulling the cover off every time you need to change SIM cards to access your second service for other countries. For me traveling to and from Canada regularly this feature saves quite a bit of time because all I have to do is tell the phone which SIM to use rather than physically changing the SIM every time I cross the border.
Now that I have an “Unlocked” Dual SIM smart phone I have been looking much deeper into the actual service providers that are available and the many packages they offer. Needless to say there are too many to even consider choosing the “best” one and that would be likely to change from country to country anyway. I was at first looking solely at carriers for Canada and quite honestly the cellular providers over there are very confusing at best and a bit steeper in price than anything here in the states. I had some friends that live in Canada offer some suggestions and some were reasonable candidates, 7-11 speakout was a feasible contender for me but what I was trying to avoid was getting strapped into anything requiring a monthly purchase to keep the number (SIM) active and that is a hard requirement to fill. Another search on Amazon actually turned up a service called Speeek.net which is a roaming sim
Up to 87% cheaper roaming
No contract, no monthly payment
Excellent signal in over 190 countries
US phone number on your SIM card
3 in 1 SIM (Nano, Micro, Standard)
as long as the service is used at least once every 12 months the number stays active and remains the same. Rates other countries vary but for me using the phone while in Canada the rates are as follows:
Outgoing Call per minute 1.03 $
Received Call per minute 0.08 $
Sent Text per message 0.39 $
Received Text per message FREE
Data cost per MB 0.23 $
I know the outgoing is a bit steep, but in all honesty the reason for having the service is for my family to have a way to reach me and at 8 cents a minute received it is a good deal! If I was to call out it would be a specific conversation anyway and would only be a few minutes… totally worth it.
Finding this deal prompted me to look deeper at my own “Domestic” cell phone usage as I mentioned earlier I have a home land line… 80% of my calls are through that line I don’t rely heavily on my cell phone and 90% of my online use is with my PC at home as well so my data usage is low on my cell as well.
As I plan on keeping my existing tracfone for a bit longer yet I am going to do an experiment on the new one by connecting with Freedom-pop. I have a sneaking suspicion that I can make use of the totally free monthly service with 200 minutes (I know this will work), 500 texts (again no issue there), 200mb data (this might be a bit short) all in all I think this will work for me even if I need to buy more data from time to time I think it will out-save tracfone that I currently use.
All said and done I an estimating that my dollars spent each year using these two new sims on my unlocked gsm smart phone may run me about $40 to $50 (that's for the full year) ! My experiment will tell the story after I use it set up this way for a few months but the outlook is looking very frugal indeed.
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