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General discussion

Why didn't I think of that?

Oct 19, 2004 7:42AM PDT

For years I kept on renewing my cell phone plans with the carriers and felt like I had no other choice. Recently I have been checking out eBAY and wondering why anyone would not just buy an unlocked cell phone and go that route. True, buying phones in the retail level costs more than with a plan, but at least you are not limited to the phones the carriers offer, but to many different phones. This is spaecially true with GSM. They seem to have so many phones out there.
One can buy an unlocked tri-band or quad-band GSM cell phone and try different carriers by buying a sim card with the prepaid plans. Try it out for a month, and then try with a different carrier. If you want one of their plans, you can get that with probably 1 year contract rather than a 2 year contract.
I think this is what I will do in the future, in 2 years time as I recently signed all my household's 4 phones to a new 2 year contract.

Discussion is locked

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Re: Why didn't I think of that?
Nov 5, 2004 6:52AM PST

Thanks for the excellent suggestion. Please tell me where one can buy unlocked phones and how do we know they are unlocked?

Ju

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Re: Why didn't I think of that?
Nov 30, 2004 2:35AM PST

I've been doing that for years. On ebay you can always find your favorite phone that the manufacturer stopped making. I've never had problems - although, I did have to switch carriers a couple of times when certain carriers wouldn't provide service on certain phones.