If you don't use a phone much, it's hard to beat Tracfone, especially if you get one with triple minutes. I bought one in March with triple min. My package came with 400 min, 400 texts, and 400 mg of data. Triple each of those. The smart phone plus the time was $130. 5 months later I still have over half of each left. I won't need to buy more time until near Christmas.
I leave the data turned off unless I'm on the road because I get emails, etc. at home. Surfing will eat the data in a hurry.
In this area, at least, Tracfone runs on Verizon's tower network.
If you like your current phone, go to their website and check 'bring your own phone' to find out if it's compatible with their service. You won't get the triple minutes, though. If you don't use data, they have cheaper minutes.
This is what my wife and I are trying out now since the first week of April. The smart phones we bought were on sale at the time for
$69.95 $79.95 and came with 400 minutes talk/text/data X 3 for 1 year, each. Any additional time we might need to buy as long as we keep these phones is triple the face amount, also. So far, no complaints.
Something to be aware of when using prepaid service, though, is any completed incoming/outgoing calls whether answered directly or by voice-mail count against your minutes. Another thing is calling support lines, paying bills by phone, etc., navigating through a maze of electronic prompts and/or being put on hold can use up minutes pretty quick.
