I tend to wear cargo trousers which have plenty room in the pockets to carry an iPad mini. Very very rarely use my iphone to place regular calls. Am wondering if an iPad mini could be an 100% phone replacement? There's no problem placing outgoing calls using eg Skype. My question is more around the sorts of secure-id-verification that various services use which seem to rely upon having a device with an operator-sim card in it which, because you have a contract, is ID-validated. Is there a way to get by in life without any kind of phone-device, to just use an iPad? When services (Paypal, a bank....) insist that you provide a phone number (for some kind of ID validation purposes) are there workarounds which mean you could do it all from an iPad?