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

[cellio]

Thanks for the explanation of VoIP. So it sounds like I can plug a phone in anywhere that I have ethernet cable run to. This covers some parts of the house well and some badly, but that could be fixable. (Ha! I knew we should have run ethernet to the kitchen! I foolishly thought "when will I ever have a computer in here?".)

$60 /month will buy you two cell phones sharing 500 minutes a month, with free inbound calls.

Ooh. That would be a significant improvement over anything we've been able to find from Sprint so far. Sounds like we need to investigate Verizon and (from someone else's comments) Cingular. Thanks.