FREE cell phone service for low income people

I mentioned on a previous post about cheap cell phone service here about Safelink Wireless a life line cell phone service provided by TracFone. Since that time another company has begun offering free life line cell phone service, Assurance Wireless

Assurance Wireless is provided by Virgin Mobile, which is now owned by Sprint. They offer 200 minutes per month for free, and additional minutes are 10 cents each. Text messages are 15 cents each or $5 for 200 messages.


Safelink Wireless minutes vary by location, but NY only offers 68 minutes per month. Tracfone Wireless minute cards can be purchased to add time to the phone a 60 unit Tracfone card will give you 100 minutes of service that expires in 90 days, and a 120 unit Tracfone card will get you 150 minutes that expire in 90 days. Sounds stupid, but two 60 unit cards will get you 50 more minutes.

So my conclusion would be to apply for the Assurance Wireless phone. Not only will you get more minutes per month for free, but you will also be on Sprint's CDMA network, unlike Tracfone, which mostly operate as an MVNO on AT&T's GSM network. (People who have read previous posts from me will notice that I am partial to CDMA, and critical of GSM, even though HSPDA is a GSM technology, and supposed to provide faster 3G data speeds.)

helpful links

Have a Boost Mobile iDEN phone (or NEXTEL), and want to install a software that you downloaded from the internet on your computer to the phone? You can with this link...
http://144.230.114.35/adp1/FUN/index.jsp?output=100

Want to search for a phone number from an address? Perhaps you want to search for a name or address from a phone number?
http://www.whitepages.com/10866/reverse-lookup

Need to know how to dial an international number from anywhere in the world, to anywhere else? Or look up what country a person is calling you from?
http://www.howtocallabroad.com/

Want a FREE DID?
http://www.ipcomms.net/product-freedid.html
http://www.ipkall.com/

What about some FREE VoIP?
http://www.voipbuster.com/en/index.html

Just want to make a free call from your PC to someone in the US or CAN?
http://callingamerica.com/ [no longer provides FREE calls]
Want to know what phone company currently controls a phone number, and what carrier originally owned that number?
http://tnid.org/

Want to know what central office serves a certain exchange? Perhaps you want other detailed information about a certain rate center, or other telephone switching equiptment? There is lots of interesting information to be found at this site.
http://www.telcodata.us/telcodata/telco?npa=&exchange=

Don't want to be bothered with telemarketers?
https://donotcall.gov/

Want to file a complaint about someone who violated the do not call list, or some other issue with a tele-commerce issue?
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

Want more info on how telephone numbers are assigned, or some other similar questions?
http://nanpa.com/

Want information about laws governing the telephone? You can check the FCC website linked below, but you should also search for the Public Service Commission (PSC) or Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for your state.
http://fcc.gov/

EDIT- 2-27-10
Got a Magic Jack and need some more help than there "customer service" provides?
http://www.magicjacksupport.com/

EDIT - 6-13-10
Free conference service http://www.freemagicconference.com/

EDIT - 6-24-10
Want to know how to get a real person on the phone, instead of having to press 1 for this 2 for that?
http://gethuman.com/

Looking for a vanity toll free number? Look up if what you want is available by using this tool, don't worry, you can order your toll free number from whatever carrier that you choose if it is available.
http://businessesales.att.com/products/lookup_toll_free_results.jhtml;jsessionid=RCRZG20MXP40JB32A5NSKT2HXQD3GJLW?grp=additional&_requestid=197365

free conference calling

[EDIT 5/15/11: newer article HERE]

I do not believe that I have ever posted about http://talkee.com before. Talkee is a website that has local access numbers all over the country for chatlines. These chatlines offer you the ability to talk to total strangers, or meet up with a bunch of your friends, and talk together. Most of them seem to be a place for perverts to hang around and try to solicit for sex, kind of like how most internet chat rooms are (not pointing any fingers, or judging any of you).

What has recently come to my attention however, is that the people who brought you the Magic Jack are offering a free conference service. The MJ service, seems to be free from the issues that might plague other chatline services like Talkee. The MJ service is only promoted on there website with a small link at the bottom of there main page, which links to a different domain http://www.freemagicconference.com/ This service seems to be geared more towards personal conferences, or professional conferences. I only just called in to see what the menu options are like, and have yet to conference with anyone on there yet. It mentions that you are using the Magic Jack conference upon calling into it, but the service seems professional enough to be able to use for a business conference calling service. The best news about it, the service is NOT limited to MJ customers, so you do not need to be calling from a MJ line, you do not even need to own a MJ device to use the service. So give it a shot, to dial in call 305-848-8888 to start a new room dial 2 then the 3 digit room, to join a room dial 1 then the 3 digit room number...

Quick and easy Verizon DSL installation

EDIT - This method probably will no longer work for you, Verizon started requiring that each DSL line be activated. Requiring that you go through the entire process of entering your order number and zip code, then going through several steps to complete the activation process. They claim because nobody reads the terms of service, which you are forced to at least view before closing that window and accepting the terms. Then you need to download an activation file to complete the activation, even if you uncheck all of the bloatware they try to get you to install. I will be making a new post about this shortly, and will provide the link to it here. Please tell Verizon that these steps are unnecessary and put a burden on small businesses that provide Verizon DSL service to their customers. HERE is the new post! 

[EDIT - this is for dynamic IP static IP settings are different, you should contact your DSL provider for those settings]

Forget about sitting at your PC for about 1/2 hour installing the whole bloatware software that comes with the DSL modem that just arrived in the mail. If your DSL due date is past, and the light is solid, meaning your modem is getting sync, you do not need to go thru all of those steps to get up and running.

First ensure that all of your phones are filtered, and make sure not to filter the modem.

Remember the first time you log into your modem at http://192.168.1.1 you will need to log in with user name: admin and with the password as: password The first time you try to do anything, it will want you to change this. For simplicity, I recommend user name: admin and password: admin this way you, or the next person that needs to log into the modem to make any changes will not have to go crazy attempting to determine what the password is.


now go to http://192.168.1.1/verizon/redirect.htm  (if .htm does not work try .html but every instance that i have come across is the .htm) now you will be on a web page that says RESTRICTED in red letters, and says not to make any changes on this page. Click the button that says DISABLE. If the button says enable, then do not click it, the redirect is already disabled.

[EDIT - 6-13-10: The following step has been confirmed that it is not required to change the user name and password for the DSL account once removing redirect from the modem]
The next step I am not sure if it is required, but something that I always do anyway. Since Verizon DSL is on open PPPoE, meaning that the user name and password is meaningless (but something still needs to be there) click network settings, then click DSL connections, then edit the user name from "newdsluser" (or whatever similar it says) to just about anything, and also change the password, I usually just enter abcd123 - remember the user name and password can be anything, it makes no difference.

The only down side to this is if you want to set up a user name for your Verizon.net  email account. I have not found a way how to accomplish this with out a call to the useless people over at 1-800-567-6789 (Verizon tech support) - every time I call I seem to get the same clueless Filipino  woman. I should get her name one day, so that I can post it here, but if you get her, don't bother, just ask to speak with someone else.

This is also a great method to installing DSL for "unsupported" operating systems such as Linux.

This works for PPPoE connections only, and not for static IP set ups. I recommend just calling the support number 1-800-567-6789 to get the static IP settings that you need to set up your system if you are using static IP

Once the modem is set up, if you plan on using a router, you will need to set it up on bridge mode. I will make a future post, or edit this one in the near future to explain how to set your router up in bridge mode, since I do not have DSL at home, and would prefer to have a modem in front of me so that I can detail each step by step instructions for you. [EDIT - 6-13-10: You do not need to use a router with a DSL modem, you can connect a switch instead, and do not need to make any changes to the modem as the modem will act as a DHCP server with the default modem settings]

Click image to enlarge.