TracFone Wireless was established in 1996 as Topp Telecom Inc., a prepaid mobile phone company, in Miami, Florida.

[6] LTE service was inaugurated by TracFone's brands over a year and a half, with Sprint networks handsets first supporting it in May 2013, followed by AT&T four months later in September, then T-Mobile in March 2014.

Other GSM phones, even those that were unlocked from another carrier, could not accept a TracFone SIM card, because these are bound to a specific handset.

On September 14, 2020, Verizon announced its intent to acquire TracFone Wireless in a cash-and-stock deal worth up to $6.9 billion.

On July 11, 2024, the Total Wireless name was reinstated as part of a rebranding, and started to only offer unlimited plans.

[15] On February 9, 2007, a preliminary settlement in a class-action lawsuit against TracFone was carried out by Jeanette Wagner, and approved in the Boone County Circuit Court in Kentucky.

In January 2015, the Federal Trade Commission started a class action lawsuit naming TracFone and its affiliates, saying that the company cut off or slowed down "unlimited" data to its customers after they reached a fixed 30-day limit.