Caution there: I tried this with an older phone (Razr) on the Verizon network and found that the phone can not be booted up if it has been inactivated (which was the case, since I migrated to another phone). Verizon confirmed that once the phone was deactivated by them it was a brick unless I wanted to have it reactivated (at a cost... of course). So in MY case this idea won't work. YMMV