Frugal phone service

[Dido]

What do you pay for your monthly phone bill and what kind of services do you have? Do you use a land-line, cell-phone, VOIP service like Vonage, or what combination of the above? What do you do for local, regional, national, and international calls?

[Dido]

I've currently got all of my services--local, regional, and long-distance--with one company, Verizon. I've got their "Freedom Basics" plan, which has unlimited calling on all of the above but none of the frills like Call Waiting or Caller ID. I don't have cell phone service, though I do carry in my car a cell phone for emergency use--it calls 911 for free, and any number if you have a credit card in hand, for outrageous rates like $12 for a 2-minute phone call--but I use that maybe once a year, so it works for me. I used to have a prepaid cell phone but I didn't like how you had to keep buying new cards every couple of months or lose your minutes. I'm kind of curious about VOIP but I know there are startup costs there. Right now my phone bill is about $40-$50/month (Verizon's Freedom's Basic is $35/month but another $10 or so in taxes gets added on, plus I do pay the inside line insurance fee. I live across the country from my family and have lots of friends who live about 50 miles away so I make a lot of use of the long-distance and regional. But $50/month seems just way out of line for basic phone service.

Is it just my imagination or have phone rates been skyrockeiting of late?

[freein2012]

Our monthly phone bill is usually right around $45. That's for a land line and is mostly the basic charges, a charge for caller ID, and just a couple of long distance calls a month.

We use Tracfone for cell phones right now. These are the first cell phones we've had and cell coverage in this area is pitiful so they were the cheapest way to go. If we went with Verizon we'd be paying about $80 a month just for cell and I don't want to do that now.

[PrincessPerky]

we pay 47 for our cell phone bill, we have no land line, never missed it.

the cell has 400 anytime minutes and unlimited weekends/evenings..also call waiting, message box, caller ID and I think some other stuff we never use. It also has no long distance and I have no roaming, the US is my service area..works well when we travel to PA (we are in NC)

[poundwise]

I pay a total of 18.67 for local, long distance, fees and taxes, monthly through Vonage.

Of course, that does require my broadband Internet connection (cable).

My cell phone is paid for by my employer.

[pearlieq]

We've got Vonage as well. Because DH is a government employee, we get a discount, so it's around $16 a month for unimited local & national calling plus voicemail, call waiting, and caller ID.

I was never so happy to dump SBC!

I will say that we don't get the same quality that we had with our landline phone. There seems to be a 1 or 2 second delay on our phone, which means my friends and I often accidentally talk over each other. Also, every once in a while someone will say they can't understand me well, but it's sporadic. The quality seems similar to a cell phone.

Still, I don't use the phone much and it was worth it to me in order to save $30 a month.

[poundwise]

Just to note: I believe the majority of difficulities people have with broadband phone service can be linked either to (a) the equipment or, (b) their broadband service.

While the latter is probably more common, it is a clear fact that the 'box' you hook up makes a big difference as well. Carriers such as Vonage, Packet8, etc. offer, or have offered, different models from Linksys, Motorola, etc. Which you have/get may make a significant difference. I, for one, can tell you that my experience has been that the Motorola equipment for Vonage is superior to the Linksys box, which, unfortunately, is the more often sold/packaged product.

Regardless, the point stands that the equipment can make a difference, even utilizing the same service. Still, I believe a greater factor is your bandwidth and quality of your broadband connection.

For the record, I have had less voice quality problems with my Vonage service than I had with Sprint/Embarq. The vast majority of the time I don't even consider that I have anything other than a typical phone line... oh, except when I pay the bill, of course.

[Fern]

My monthly bill is $25 for a land line i never use for anything but local calls. I use a .03 calling card for toll calls. Yes, I'm CHEAP.

[tabbycat31]

my monthly bill is $39.74 for a cellphone. I havent used a landline since 2002

[rob62521]

We have both cell phones and landline. I would like to dump the landline, but dh says no.

We have Cingular for cell phones. The company gives 15% discounts to folks who work in different fields like education, for the city, UPS, etc. If you have Cingular, you might check to see if you work for a company or organization that they recognize and will give you the discount.

[Koppur]

I pay $35 (after taxes) for my land line from Verizon. I have no long distance, call waiting, etc. My internet is a dial-up for $9.98 a month, unlimited, via Wal-Mart, so I need the land line to get online. Sadly, that is all I use my home phone for. Well, that, and for bill collectors. LOL I use my cell phone for everything else...free long-distance, unlimited nights and weekends, 600 daytime minutes...$35 a month, through T-Mobile. I've been looking into finding a cheaper alternative for the land line, though. I'm hoping to find somewhere where I can get DLS/cable whatever for the internet and a phone through the internet for less than $50 a month. Don't see it happening anytime soon.

[Saving in So Cal]

My land line (SBC/AT&T) is $18 and my cell phone (Verizon) is $55. The land line has only the bare minimum. (I figured out what the bare minimum was by going to the AT&T website.)

The cell phone has all of the usual features, except I didn't buy a text messaging plan. I get a 15% discount on the cell phone through work. (Go to Verizon's website, find the employee discount page, put in your work e-mail and you will get a pop-up telling you whether your employer has an employee discount and what it is.) I have a 1400 minute, 4-person Family Share plan that my husband and I split with my parents. My husband and my parents, who are all self-employed, use their cell phones for their work, which is why we have so many minutes. This seems to be the lowest I can go short of eliminated the landline entirely.

[Daymon]

I use Packet8 Broadband phone service. It's $19.99 a month for unlimited local plus long distance anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. Of course some may say "yeah but you have to have broadband Internet and that's more expensive". In my case it hasn't been. My lower cost for phone service actually helps me pay for my broadband service. To give a comparison, before I switched to broadband phone service and Internet, I used MCI Neighborhood which is supposed to be $50.00 a month but ends up being around $80.00 after all the taxes and sir charges and add-ons they charge you for. I had MSN 9 dial-up which was another $21.00 a month. All total, landline phone with unlimited long distance plus dial-up ISP cost me around $100.00 a month, whereas, my broadband phone is only about $23.00 after tax and broadband Internet is about $45.00. In effect I got upgraded calling (since it included Canada) and High Speed Internet for less than $70 dollars a month. An average savings of $30.00 a month for better service. Needless to say, I no longer have landline phone service, and haven't for about 2 years. Pretty nifty huh?

[djaco]

I also use Packet8 internet phone service for $19.99 per month. My total monthly phone bill for unlimited local and long distance calling (including taxes and E911) is about $24 per month. Prior to switching to Packet8, I paid more than this just for a dial tone with the local phone company. With long distance calls, my total phone bill used to average about $60 per month.

I also used to use dial up internet which cost me $19.99 a month. Broadband via Time Warner Cable is $45, but the extra $25 is offset by the savings on the phone. Switching to internet phone and broadband instantly saved me $15 per month, and there are added bennies that I didn't have before. Now that I have unlimited long distance, I can talk to my long distance friends and family much more frequently now.

If you're interested in getting Packet8, you can get some extra discounts (usually a free month of service, but the specials change from time to time) by ordering from this site: http://www.savewith8.com and using coupon code: telebay-govoip.

[lrjohnson]

We pay about $17.50 a month, so it's around $8.75 each a month. that's for Landline, local only, no additions (no call waiting, etc.) About once every three months we might have an additional 50 cents for a toll call.

We paid $20 early last year for a long distance phone card....we still have a ton of minutes left. We contact folks mostly by e-mail.

We are thinking of going pure cell and no landline, but I just don't think we can get as cheap as $8.75 EACH.....