[BBLISA] Cell phone plan for a sysadmin?

[Alex Aminoff]

On 7/4/2011 2:58 PM, K. M. Peterson wrote:
> Hi Alex,
>
> There is, unfortunately, no completely metered mobile service.
>
> The most simple and least expensive is likely to be one of the prepaid carriers.  They are not completely metered, as you do get a bucket (that is, an allowance for usage that expires).

I want to follow up on this thread from a couple months ago. I did 
finally find a completely metered mobile service, from PlatinumTel:

http://www.platinumtel.com/plans/realpaygo

The catch is that if you buy less than $100 worth of air time, the 
credits expire after a certain amount of time, meaning that you are in 
effect paying a certain minimum rate per month even if you use the phone 
not at all. BUT, if you buy $100 credit, it never expires. Obviously I 
will have to keep the phone for many years to make this actually work 
out economically, but that is what I intend to do.

I bought a LG Lotus, which is a "dumb" phone from a few years ago. It 
receives text messages, there is a email to SMS gateway, and it has a 
rudimentary web browser. No ssh client though, but I trust that I will 
always be close enough to a real machine with a keyboard that it would 
be faster to get there than to try to ssh through the phone.

  - Alex Aminoff
    BaseSpace.net