There are prepaid GSM services in the US that use a SIM. AT&T's gophone service would work, and T-Mobile has a prepaid service as well. There are also probably some small prepaid carriers that could work for this. I used to use AT&T gophone, and if it was just using SMS (and not data) it sounds like you could buy the bare minimum of a $100 (less with some online phone card sites) lasting a year, for $8.33 a month. At $.10 a SMS (and pinging the location on this thing will take 2), you could check the location 41 times month, unless it consumes more (maybe you get charged for the AGPS?) So possibly you could use this for theft recovery exclusively at semi-not-ridiculous rates.