There used to be a company called Tickertel where you could call and get a real time quote on any stock. It cost a few cents a call, but I found it very helpful when I am away. They seem to be gone now. Does anyone know of any other service like this? Thanks.
T D Waterhouse offers free, unlimited phone quotes. I transferred my funds from them to IB. I kept just a few bucks in the account to keep it open. Waterhouse emailed me and said they would charge a $15 inactivity fee every quarter. The account is now empty, but they haven't closed it. So I use them for phone quotes on the road, because I travel a lot also. But even at $15 every three months, that is pretty cheap.
The customer support line for Datek, www.datek.com , offers free quotes via phone. Most of the time they don't even ask you for a username.
Is there a particular reason you want to use the phone? If not, and you're talking about using it in the U.S., consider a wireless PDA (like the Palm i705). Palm's minimum plan used to be $10/month. If your broker doesn't, I suspect one of the free realtime quote sites on the net has a Palm solution (anybody have pointers?). If not, it shouldn't cost you more than about another $10 a month if you have to pay for the quotes. This is generally faster, more informative, and more user-friendly than telephone quotes like Waterhouse's.