I know pretty much nothing about cell phones, so bear with me here.
I want to get a prepaid cell phone to use both at home (zip code 48316) and 10 hours away at college (zip code 49931).
So far the carriers I'm looking at (mainly because they have low-price prepaid and actually get coverage at the college I'm going to) are Tracfone, Net10, and Alltel.

I'm pretty confused on how this works though. I know that there is a "local calling area", where you make most of your calls, and that you're charged extra for making calls outside of this area. So, obviously, I would want to change it depending on whether or not I was up at school, or at home for summer break. But, based on some of the things I've read on these carriers' sites, your cell phone number might change if you change the zip code of your local calling area. Is this true?

If anyone can shed some light on this, or explain how using a phone in two places like this works, it would be very, very appreciated.

Thank you!

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