I was looking for a way to reduce my phone bills.

My Pain Point:

I have or should I say had 2 phone lines running into my home. The phone company was merrily charging me close to 30.00 per month with all the various bizarre taxes for the privilege.

My dilemma was:

• I want to keep the phone number and pay less.

I looked at Voice over IP. I was surprised to find that a reliable Voice over IP player was not cheap. This is due to the fact that they want to replace your main line with all the long distance services etc. This was not the case for me.

What I wanted:

I wanted this:

• A simple low monthly cost phone service that I could port my existing phone number to and have a reliable level of service.

My Solution:

I think I have finally found a nice alternative:

Tracfone

Tracfone is a prepaid cell phone service in the US. I proceeded to Wal-Mart looked at the available phones and on the advice of the clerk I purchased the Motorola W376g flip phone that has double minutes for life. It's a nice phone I like it

I wanted to register the phone and basically see how it works, reception etc. I used the stuff it included to activate it and magically it worked. No issues. I was even more surprised. The cell reception was significantly BETTER!!! than my cell phone from the big carrier.

Porting Over My Old Number To Tracfone:

I was ready to move my phone number. I called Tracfone at 1-800-867-7183 The rep started my port took my required information and assigned me a ticket number. I was advised it could take up to 30 days to change this number over to Tracfone. (It took about 2 weeks in reality)

I was told I would receive a new SIM card from Tracfone and not to insert that until I had seen that my trouble ticket was complete and told to do so. Sure enough 2 days later a FedEx package arrive and the new SIM and instruction letter were included.

DO NOT activate your phone if you get this SIM. Until you check your trouble ticket and it tells you to activate your phone.

I knew things were nearly ready when the existing land-line stopped working and then when I checked the trouble ticket it said my phone was ready to reactivate.

I placed the SIM in the phone and reactivate it and like magic it worked and had my old number.

What you get:

I setup the voice mail and then to make sure I do not ever lose the number I subscribed to a monthly Tracfone service for 9.99 ... 10.69 with taxes. for 50 minutes per month , since I bought a double minutes for life phone I get 100 minutes per month.

This is fine for me. I do not get many calls on this line and if I do I usually let them roll to voice mail and then check that via my existing land-line. I return any calls via my land-line.

• I get a low cost second phone line with my old number
• Cellphone that prortable
• Voicemail
• Texting
• Number based Caller-ID

This has saved me about $25.00 per month. I'm thrilled.

Take note:

The port takes time and you will lose the ability to use that phone number you are porting for a period of time. For me it was a few days on the weekend.. no big deal. I noticed no dial tone on the line I ported so I called it and got the Tracfone voicemail which I retrieved once the number was fully ported and activated.

Conclusion:

I wanted a simple cheap service for a second line.. and I think I found it. If your in the same scenario as me you might want to give this a try .