[ditchdigger]

I work for a large company and some of the employees who have customer contacts are issued company cell phones. The phone plan is company wide, in that it draws from a large pool of millions of minutes, with 1000 text messages per month per user, as well as for some cases, a data plan.

The company has stated that the phone is for business use, and not intended for personal use. Yet it is very apparent that everyone, I mean everyone use it for personal purposes as well, it's just too convenient not to. Because of this the company is incurring a very large phone bill each month, just in the USA alone the monthly cell phone bill exceeds 1 million dollars. They were looking for ways to cut cost and travel cost and cell phone charges are some items they would like to see the abuse reduced.

What they did was first have all employees signed a cell phone policy acknowledgment, and in the policy it is clearly stated that a company cell phone is issued exclusively for the purpose of conducting company business.

Next, they posted the entire cell phone bill for each user account on the company web site, where any employee can go see someone else's phone bill. So I can go look up Mary Smith's phone bill, see all the phone numbers that called her, and all the phones numbers that she called out to, and durations. I could also see a list of text messages and the incoming text number or the outgoing text number. I could also see if the user have used instant messaging each IM message, time and byte size, and if it's Yahoo or MSN or AOL etc...internet usage is being shown as DATA or DATA TRANSFER with each instance's byte size.

So this not only is showing how much a particular employee is being charged for his/her usage of the phone, but also how the phone is used every minute every second, the phone numbers that called/texted in and out. I was looking at my phone bill and yes I do have some personal usages on it, what is also worrisome is that there are some phone numbers on them, if you do a reverse look up, will clearly be identified as personal usages, for example, I had ordered pizza a few times, and the number showed Pappa Johns Pizza and everyone knows this is personal if they were to look it up. I also have a friend who works at an adult toy store that I talk to once or twice, and if they again reverse the phone number one would see an adult toy store name and that would be embarrassing to even have to explain. One thing I am wondering, is whether these bills can be further expanded to show more details. For example, is it possible for the bill to actually show the content of the text messages, or the content of the IM, or the web addresses where the phone user visited?

Which leads to my question below. I think I am better off finding a way to conduct non-business phone usages offline and pay for it myself..which is I believe the ultimate objective of the company.

This is current thought but it would help if someone knowledgeable would let me know if this would work or not.

My cell phone is a smart phone HTC Fuze. I am fine with it, not the greatest phone but it's free from the company. I have a data plan as well. The company plan is AT&T. My HTC Fuze says at&t on the top right corner. I think it is not going to work with other carriers.

If I get an AT&T GOPHONE, those you can from Target and pay as you go, and I am not a heavy cell phone user anyways, I do text sometimes, but not a lot. Can I take the SIM card of that GOPHONE, and put it in my HTC Fuze issued by AT&T, and use that SIM card on this same phone? It's the same carrier so it should work, right?

What I want to do, is to use the company SIM card on the company phone from 9 to 5. During that time, I will use the company phone for business usage only. If there is an emergency, my family and friends can contact me on my company cell, and that's fine.

Before 9am, after 5pm, on weekends, I plug the personal SIM card into my phone, and I am on personal time. If the company says hey you did not respond to an after hour company call, I say the company says phone is for company use only, and hence I have a company phone, and a personal phone. I cannot carry two phones on me at all times, so I carry the personal phone when I am on personal time. It is a reasonable position I believe. You cannot have the cake and eat it too.

Thanks for any advice in advance.

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› See More: Mixing business and personal cell usages on the same phone using two SIM cards?

[tavenger5]

I don't think you can use a go phone sim on this phone. You would have to purchase a similar plan to what you have at work to use the Fuze.
The Fuze is the same as the Touch Pro - Simore makes a dual sim holder for it, but I do not know how well it works. This video demonstrates the functionality:

[VIDEO]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJZhoy9I69k[/VIDEO]

[SimpleToes]

this is quite real and this is not a bad idea. I did the same when I opened my own business. Initially, I was afraid so I asked the site https://www.esigngenie.com/industries/healthcare/ to help me