Hi all, not sure if this has been asked before but I'll ask it again
and you can moan if it has

I'm looking to place a remote metering device approximately 25 miles
from my house - the only wireless method of data comms i can find is
using gsm technology. The price of a GSM specific board is seriously
prohibitive, especially as a) the device will be in a fairly insecure
location and b) is only a fun project. I do, however, have a stack of
old cell phones sitting around-anyone know if i can modify one of the
older types to accept serial data from my device and be
'dial-into-able' from a standard modem so I can grab current data? I've
seen a fair few companies about it but they all quote 500+ for this
sort of setup, which is just beyond a students limits lol.
Anyone know of anyone who has done a similar thing before? Seems like
something someone would have attempted, if you see what i mean?

Any help appreciated, google is only good at returning commercial
solutions.
Cheers
James