On 12/4/2015 7:11 PM, Ralph Mowery wrote:
"rickman" wrote in message
...

More recently I got on a friend's AT&T account as a second phone and pay
$20 a month with unlimited voice and text. Now I just don't give it a
thought and the thing works pretty well. Much less hassle than buying the
PITA phone cards.

You don't pay for minutes with your land line do you? You may be in the
UK where I think all usage is metered. In the US most people pay $20-$25
a month for unlimited local use. Think of your $100 a year in that light.


No I am in the US, North Carolina. Landline is about $ 20 per month, but
they add tax and a bunch of other things to almost double that. That is for
local service. It is 10 cents per minuit for long distance. We usually use
the cell phones for long distance.

Are you sure about your phone rates? My land line is $15 a month total
with more than half being various add ons the phone company would like
you to think are taxes, but aren't. In fact, AT&T once lied to me that
the universal service fee was a tax they were required to collect from
consumers by the government. I contacted the FCC who said it was just a
tax on the phone companies.


My Republic plan is interisting. For $ 10 (12 after tax) I get unlimiated
phone and text. Most of the time the phone will attach to a wifi if close,
but will go to the cell tower if it has to. I also get unlimiated data by
going through wifi only. I don't ever need the data, but do play with it
alot around the house on my wifi and in waiting rooms at doctors. If I get
into a bind and really need data without wifi I can tell the phone to
activate a data plan for about $ 20 per month and when done, go back to
wifi.

I may look into that. Seems they use Sprint for phone calls which not a
good one for coverage. Can you make calls through your Internet
connection?

--

Rick

"rickman" wrote in message
...
.

Are you sure about your phone rates? My land line is $15 a month total
with more than half being various add ons the phone company would like you
to think are taxes, but aren't. In fact, AT&T once lied to me that the
universal service fee was a tax they were required to collect from
consumers by the government. I contacted the FCC who said it was just a
tax on the phone companies.


My Republic plan is interisting. For $ 10 (12 after tax) I get
unlimiated
phone and text. Most of the time the phone will attach to a wifi if
close,
but will go to the cell tower if it has to. I also get unlimiated data
by
going through wifi only. I don't ever need the data, but do play with it
alot around the house on my wifi and in waiting rooms at doctors. If I
get
into a bind and really need data without wifi I can tell the phone to
activate a data plan for about $ 20 per month and when done, go back to
wifi.

I may look into that. Seems they use Sprint for phone calls which not a
good one for coverage. Can you make calls through your Internet
connection?


My land line phone rate is close to $ 40 per month. The basic service runs
just under $ 20, then 911, long distance line connect, 10 cents per minuit
long distance and a bunch of other taxes and such run it to about $ 40 per
month.

Republic works by mostly connecting by what ever wifi system it is near. If
no wifi then it will use a cell tower.

The one bad thing is they require you to use one of their smart phones. It
is like any common smart phone using the Android system, but it uses some of
their special software. You buy their phone, I think one is about $ 100
another about $ 200 and another that costs much more. They seem to bepriced
by the ammount of memory and the meg of camera pixals.

I can sit in my house (or anywhere there is wifi) and look at most anything
on the internet. With the cable tv or direct tv I can even watch much of
what I subscribe to. Not sure if that is over the internet or from the
device hooked to the tv. I think it is over the internet.

I don't know what phone service they use. I seldom make phone calls. Just
mostly want it for emergencies.