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vate the phone through TracFone, you must In summary, as competition has spurred more
first purchase a TracFone SIM activation kit BYOP options among the low-cost providers those
(which Walmart conveniently sells for $9.98). looking for a back-up smartphone or who antici-
Last night I visited my local Walmart and bought pate low usage can find good moderately-priced
their last LG phone and a TracFone SIM kit phones and very reasonable plans.
(over the objections of the salesperson who
kept trying to explain to me that there was al-
ready an AT&T SIM card installed in the phone
and that I did not need a second such SIM card
from TracFone). She was right, of course, had I
been willing to activate the phone through
AT&T. But AT&T’s cheapest prepaid plan is
$30 per month and does not include data. (You
can purchase data packages separately, at $5
per 100 MB.)

At 7:08 pm I opened the phone package, took
the back off the phone, removed the AT&T SIM
card, installed the appropriate TracFone SIM
card, inserted the battery and reinstalled the
back of the phone. I then took the phone to my
desktop computer, plugged in a USB cord to
charge the battery and turned on the phone.
After going through the usual screens to choose
language and connect to my Wi-Fi network, I
went to the TracFone website on my computer
to begin the activation process. This is very
straight-forward; just follow the steps that the
website takes you through. I purchased a 90-
day service package that provides 180 minutes
of calling, 180 text messages and 180 MB of Phil Bock won 50/50 Rafe
data for $19.98, and completed the activation
process. At the same time, I signed up for auto-
renewal, which will save 10% off their already
low price on future renewals. After a test phone September Winners
call and taking a photo with the camera and
sending it as an email attachment to my home
computer to make sure everything was working
properly, I was finished. The time was then
7:52 pm.

Had I activated this phone through AT&T, it
would have cost me at least $360 per year for
talk & text, plus however many data packages I
purchased at $5 each. Rollover is not an issue
for the unlimited talk and text, but any unused
data only rolls over for one month. With
TracFone our new phone operates over the
same AT&T network, but will only cost $80 a
year while providing all the talk, text and data
we need. Moreover, unused talk minutes, texts
and data roll over indefinitely. Should we find
that this basic plan does not provide enough
talk, text and data, we can bump up to higher
level plans for a modest increase in price. (It is
worth noting that since our new phone operates
just as well over Wi-Fi as it does when it is us-
ing a cellular connection, this helps minimize
our cellular service needs.)

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