phone service

[cellio]

We're paying too much for phone service and want to reduce that, but -- as you would expect -- there is no one-stop source of information on the options. (Quick, someone set up phonesfordummies.com!) Part of the problem might be that we need to change the way we think about phone usage. So, I turn to the brain trust. :-)

We currently have a land line, from which we do most of our calling, and two cell phones with minimal usage (but enough that we want to keep them). We have, for each phone, a $20/month plan that provides 40 minutes (20 peak, 20 not). We feel we're over-paying for the land line; Verizon makes it hard to find out about the lower-end options and all the other fees you'll pay in advance, and we probably got sold a bill of goods on our current plan. We can undo that.

Most of our calls are local or regional. We rarely make long-distance calls, except to his family in Canada. Conventional long-distance plans really only mean the US, by the way. We used to sometimes use those 10-10-### plans for long distance, except that we couldn't keep track of which ones were best for which types of calls and when we lost the cheat sheet next to the phone we didn't recreate it.

I don't know how much Dani cares, but I want to use a conventional phone for most calls, particularly longer ones. Cell phones are not as comfortable to hold (and sometimes be able to hear on), and I assume VoIP constrains me to use a mic while sitting at my computer, which is sub-optimal. (We are, by the way, very satisfied with our DSL service, so we're probably not open to changing that as part of a package.)

My current thinking is that we should get a minimal local service plan for the land line and use cell phones for long-distance calls. This implies that we want cell plans that include free long distance (I gather that's common). Ideally, we'd have a two-phone single plan (shared bucket of minutes), but so far those look more expensive than two individual plans. Maybe I just don't know where to shop. Carriers don't advertise their cheaper options sometimes; we couldn't find our current plan on Sprint's web site when we last looked for it.

We currently have Sprint for the cell phones. We like the phones and the service has been fine so far. We're not averse to buying new phones if we need to change carriers. We do both require phones that fit comfortably in a pocket, which presumably means flip-phones. We basically don't care about other features. We want to keep our phone numbers.

Who and what should we be looking at? What other questions should we be asking ourselves?

Comments

voip and cell

[brokengoose.livejournal.com]

There's an article about consumer VOIP at O'Reilly Network (http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2005/06/27/talkischeap.html). The author is, in my opinion, far too optimistic in almost every scenario, but he does a decent job with the basics.

For what it's worth, Laura and I considered the same thing (cell for long-distance). It works okay for me, but I think Laura really prefers making long distance calls on the cordless telephone rather than the cell phone. Consequently, we may drop back to a basic cell plan on both phones until the contract's up. It's not worth it to us unless we're both using the same system.

As far as cell companies go, $20/month seems to be the minimum for a normal plan. Virgin Mobile has a pre-paid plan that uses Sprint's network and makes you buy $20 worth of minutes (between 80 and 200 minutes, depending on how you use them) every three months. $7/month isn't bad for a light user. If we could get -any- Sprint coverage where we live, we'd still be using the Virgin Mobile phones.

Re: voip and cell

[cellio]

Thanks for the link and the pointer to Virgin Mobile! $7/month for light usage sounds like a fine idea.