How to build a Steampunk computer.
http://steampunkworkshop.com/
Ohh and a Steampunk artist that I find quite funny.
www.doctorsteel.com He's taking over the world.
As for the services. As with the Internet Cell phone coverage is not free...it has MAJOR overhead....MILLLLLLIIIOOOOONNNNNNNNNSSSSSSSS of dollars of overhead. Infact I have 120Million dollars worth of servers and crap in the Warehouse I work in right now to handle upgrades to provide better data services.
You don't have to sign a contract and you can refuses to give you SSN. The trick is you have to go to a "company owned store" or deal directly with the carrier on the phone.
Now let me point out the point of the contract and SSN.
The contract gets you discounts. 100 off the phone for a 2 year and a plan with more perks. When I was in sales no contract you lost the free mobile to mobile.
The SSN is protection to the company. You don't pay your bill they have recourse. You a habitual non bill payer they will be able to see that from the credit check and if you have payment issues then expect to pay a HEFTY deposit.
What you don't see is there are instances where you can incur charged above and beyond your plan. Like the little princess that mom was buying a phone for. Would not buy a text message plan and would not let me kill the feature all together becasue her little angle is a good kid and will not use the feature. So a month later the little angles mom is in my store in tears crying about the 4000+ text messages her little angle managed to pound off in 4 weeks at 10cents a message running her bill up to $1k. But I'm just a stupid sales person and my advice is worthless.
You can also get into instance where you roam and the roaming bill often takes 30 days to show up. If you read the fine print it clearly states No charge for roaming when "on their system". The carrier will get a bill for your roaming from the carrier you roamed on.
Now If you don't want a contract and you don't want to give your SSN expect to pay retail for the phone you buy and a $1000 deposit that you will get back often with interest after 1 year of clear payment history. That is going to be what you can expect from any of the major players.
Now a neat little trick that I believe still works. Unlimited data "on a phone" as in the phones built in browser" is a pretty reasonable $30 a month.
You start letting them know you plan to use it for a laptop thats when they will want to up the anty. What you need to do is pick a phone thats good at being used as a modem. Say nothing other then you want the unlimited data on the phone. Tell them nothing of your data intentions.
