Saving money on phone service isn’t that hard, if you’re willing to do a little work. With a ton of VoIP phone companies now available in the US, and a few land-line phone companies, there are lots of options for saving money, especially if you already have broadband internet service.
Landline telephone service is usually more expensive than VoIP phone service, but if your call volume is light, it can actually be cheaper. You can currently get a local phone line from many of the major carriers, for around $15 per month, but most of those plans don’t come with any features, like caller id, call waiting or voicemail, unless you pay extra. And, if you make any long distance calls, those are going to be charged to your phone bill too. Even with the addition of some long distance calling, if you’re a light caller, you could still keep your phone bill under $20 per month with land-line phone service.
On the other hand, if you already have broadband internet service in your home, you might as well use it to your advantage, and use a VoIP telephone service providers. The phone service now provided by VoIP companies is just as good as the service provided by wireline companies, though some people still remember the bad old days when it sucked. The best way to now lower your monthly phone bills, is to grab a VoIP calling plan that includes unlimited local and long distance phone service. Many of these plans cost around $10 to $15 per month, and come with a ton of features that regular phone companies can’t offer, like voice mail to email, free conference calling and free international calling.
While trying to find the best local and long distance phone deals can be a pain if you sift through company websites trying to compare plans yourself, there are many websites on the net that now do the calling plan comparison for you. Just go to Google, Yahoo or Bing, and search for something like “compare phone service”, or “phone rate search tool”, and you should come up with a list of sites that aggregate plans from a ton of different companies. Go through the search tool on a couple of the sites, and see who has the cheapest plans in your state.
If you already have broadband internet service, and you want to skip the online search for phone service, you should just try out Magicjack, which offers unlimited local and long distance phone service for under $20 per year, or maybe just try Skype first, if you’re willing to make calls through your computer. While these products are OK, only Magicjack also offers the ability to keep your current phone number, as well as having e911 service.
Try to get this information from your old phone bills, and have it available, before visiting the calling plan comparison websites:
- Any countries that you call on a regular basis, and the average number of minutes.
- The number of minutes of out of state long distance calls.
- Fees that your current phone company charges every month.
- The number of minutes of instate long distance calling you make per month.
Using this information, in conjunction with the comparison website’s rate tools, can quickly show you where you can save the most money, and who offer the best calling features in your area.
If at all possible, when doing your comparison, check the button that shows you VoIP calling plans too, since the Federal Communications Commission is looking at doing away with land-line phone service in the near future. AT&T and other phone companies have requested the FCc do away with land-line phone service, since it’s so much more expensive to maintain. Over the last year or two, the Federal Communications Commission has been redoing some of their taxes and fees, to encourage phone companies to bring broadband internet service into all areas of the country, so that they can switch their customers over to VoIP phone service instead.
Now that you know how to find cheaper phone service, head on over to a search engine and get started today.
