[telecom] cellular telco region with lowest "911" and other gov't fees?

Given the increasing use of "two factor authorization" which sends a "good for five minutes" password via sms text to your phone, plus lots of other reasons to have a textable cell phone that's NOT my or my wife's "real" one [a], I figured I'd get a Tracfone or similar prepaid cheapie.

More and more areas are adding specialized cellco taxes and "911 fees" and non tax taxes, etc. which they're extending to the pre-paid accounts (up to now they've usually forgotten about them...) which will quickly eat up the balances.

Since 99 pct of our use would be texting, which is distance and location insensitive, the "home area" doesn't matter. And while a "where is this area code" might sometimes be an issue if we use it for calling, that's something we can deal with.

Any one know of any publicly available list that keeps track of all these fees?

Thanks muchly

[a] Giving it to, say, the IRS would be annoying but not critical. But there are plenty of others where they'd be data mining/sharing and would text out other times and garbage... So we do NOT want to rutinely give out our real phones.

_____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key snipped-for-privacy@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

Reply to
danny burstein
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In article you write:

If you just want a number to get texts, sign up for Google Voice. The numbers are textable, the texts show up in the linked inbox or the hangouts app. Works great.

For mine I set up a Google account tied to a non-google address so the texts show up there.

R's, John

PS: I also have a Tracfone, for which the 911 fees seem to be added on at the time I buy credit, making it hard to compare to anything else. But at $18+tax per 90 days, Tracfones can be very cheap, particularly now that you can use pretty much any AT&T, T-Mo, or Verizon phone.

Reply to
John Levine

Fee listings I do not know, but prepaid services like those Page Plus provides, when paid for with a PIN code such as those CallingMart offers, seemingly *do not* collect such fees, taxes, offsets, or similar charges.

Under the Page Plus $10-refill-at-least-every-120-days plan, for example, each text, in or out, is 5 cents, each month sees a 50 cent keep-alive charge, and each domestic airtime minute, in or out, costs 10 cents. Remaining balances, if any, at refill time, are usable the next 120-days.

I keep two such lines open, each has accumulated multiple dozens of dollars in credits over the years. Other outfits probably offer similar deals.

HTH. -- tlvp

Reply to
tlvp

Note that Google Voice does not receive all short code SMS texts.

(See for more on short codes.)

I use a T-mobile prepaid plan [which is] no longer available; it gives me a one year expiration on my time. So every year I buy another $10 worth of time. But receiving a SMS does costs me $0.15.

Reply to
David Lesher

ALso note the state tax, set by the declared residence address, varies widely:

1) WA 18.78% 3) NY 18.04% 43) MI 7.98% 52) OR 1.84%

On top of, of course, the federal 6.64% tax.

Reply to
David Lesher

For this purpose, getting 2FA codes, I'd think that was a feature, less SMS junx. I can't ever recall failing to get a 2FA code on my Goog Voice account.

If you want a real phone the cheapest thing I know now is Tracfone's $18 per 90 days with autorenewal. It's cheap, but it's a lot more than $10/yr.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

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