Please recommend non-telco long distance service?

[Bob M]

A little off topic but because it relates directly to my HOME telephone I thought this group might provide good input.

I currently use at&t for my long distance service. I am paying on average about $.30/minute (OUCH) with a monthly minimum whether I use it or not. Time to change.

What long distance alternatives are any of you folks using that you are satisfied with? How did you sign up? What was your cost to switch?

I know there are VoIP solutions available such as Vonage, etc. but I'd like to keep it right at the dial tone. Even my Comcast cable's long distance cost is way too much around here (Central CT).

I look forward to any/all suggestions/recommendations.

Thanks

[ransley]

Have you checked out other ATT rates recently I pay alot less, you might get a better deal online.

[HeyBub]

You get a gizmo from Vonage (VoIP) that plugs into your high-speed internet router and you plug a telephone into that. For $19/month you get:

• Another telephone number, with a dial tone.

• All the bells and whistles (caller-id, voice-mail, forwarding, call-waiting, etc.).

• All the long distance you can eat.

• No computer is required.

That's $19/month, period. No sales tax, universal access fee, Spanish-American War tax, Al Gore tax, fuel surcharge, blah-blah-blah. $19/month, period.

You can then use this new telephone line for (at least) all your outgoing long-distance calls.

You even get to pick your area code! Suppose you live in California but all your relatives live on Cape Cod. By choosing a 508 Area Code, when your relatives call you, to them it's a local call.

Our small business averaged over $200/month in LD charges, even at $0.03/minute. All that went away when we got our first Vonage line. We now have three Vonage lines, having dropped the $65/month charge, each, for a basic business service from AT&T.

You can pick up a "kit" at Best Buy, Sam's Club, Walmart and many other places for the 1st month's service price. Try the product for a month. If you don't love the service, simply quit.

[Uncle Monster]

Right now I'm using a MagicJack. The service has improved over the year I've been using it because of software and their infrastructure updates. I don't recommend replacing your local standard phone service with it but if you have a good high speed internet service it will work well as a second phone service or a long distance solution only. It does not support faxing so I'm about to get service with Viatalk using a dedicated VOIP adapter that has two POTS lines and provisioning from Viatalk for fax and I will keep the MagicJack because I can use it anywhere with my laptop and a WiFi connection. Most of the people who've had problems with MagicJack simply didn't understand what it is and what it does.

[8~{} Uncle Monster

[Leroy]

All of the above also applies to MagicJack, but it's only $20 per *year* rather than $20 per month. I've used MJ as my home phone for four months now and am very pleased with it. If you've got high speed internet, it's a great way to get a phone with unlimited long and local dialing. Canada is included also. A big plus is you can put the small USB device in your pocked and use it on any computer with BB internet connection.

Go to DSLreports.com and read the MagicJack forum to get a better background on it.

[The Reverend Natural Light]

I'll second the Vonage suggestion. Give it a try.

Remember, you can plug it into your house phone wiring so all your regular phones work just like they did before.

[limeylew]

You could install Skype on your computer

It costs me about .02 cents/min to call England (if I remember correctly)

Lewis.

*****

[Pete C.]

Before jumping ship to a non-telco LD, you may want to investigate the ATT LD plan options. The default plan generally sucks, and there are much better available. For example with ATT LD and the appropriate plan which runs a few $/mo I get $0.08/min to the UK.

[George]

If you want to stay with your regular phone line then you might look at something like onesuite. You put $10 in your account to start and it costs $0.025/minute to call anywhere in the US. It doesn't cost anything to sign up. Just go to their web site onesuite.com

[hallerb]

use cell phone for LD at off peak times

[Reed]

I'll second the vote for OneSuite. It avoids all the PC/Internet/VOIP/power outage issues. Does mean dailling extra numbers, but I use speeddial to minimize that (I can make Int'l calls with 2 buttons) Can also be used when away from home. Excellent call quality anywhere.

Seems like almost all 1+ carriers now charge a monthly minimum , which is why I dumped AT&T, and ClearChoice

[Chuck]

I have ATT for my cell phone and pay $39/ mo. That fee covers all local and LD with lots of features and a free phone. I use the cell for all LD and have never paid extra for the calls.

[Bennett Price]

[BRUCE]

Drop your long distance carrier and get a phone card from Sams Club.

I think they're currently 3.5 cents a minute

[Hell Toupee]

The best solution for you will depend in part on how much long-distance calling you do each month. If it's very little, the simplest approach would be to use a dial-around service. Some charge simply a per-minute fee, others (such as 10-10-220) charge a flat fee for the first several minutes of the call, then a per-minute charge after that. The charge is added to your phone bill only when/if you use the service. No monthly minimum charges, you don't have to have a long-distance carrier to use the service.

This site lists services and their fee structures:

You could also buy a prepaid phone card and use it to make calls. Again, this is handy if you don't call long-distance very often.

HellT

[Red Green]

Bob M wrote in news:gcdlb9$gub$ [e-mail]:

I don't do much long distance calling but using USADatanet.

Summary Info:

You can check access number availibility from that page as well.

No monthly fee. If no use that month then bill is $0.00.

.10/min with In-Region (5 US regions) cap of 0.99 yep, 6 hr call is 0.99, 3 min call is .30 .10/min with out of region cap of 1.99 yep 20 hr call is 1.99, 5 min call is .50

Register home phone # with them. Call from home to local access #

-or- Call from anywhere in US to a local access #. No extra charge for doing this. Just like calling from home.

Been using it for years. Call quality is just like local calling. Had a call drop only once in years I've been using it.

[Puddin' Man]

I flushed 'em when they buggered my monthly flat fee.

Someone here suggested Yak (10-10-925, ILD Telesvcs). They currently charge me (per month):

flat .99 BS fees .38 per min. .05

Billing comes on your reg phone bill Dial 10-10-925-1-Areacode-number

It's worked reasonably well.

P

"Take Yo' Hand Out My Pocket (I Ain't Got Nothing What Belongs To You)!" - Rice Miller, who probably never even _heard_ of Paulson, Bernanke, etc

[Rudy]

3.9 cents a minutes Phone cards at either Sam's Club or Costco..about $ 20 and they can be "refilled" as you go

[Rudy]

The prior poster advised that they connect the Vonage box to their ROUTER. Did I understand the MJ info wrong, it thought you had to plug it into a USB port on a computer. Since I use a laptop, I wouldn't want to leave it "on" all the time so the phone would work ( It gets HOT). I can leave the router on 'full time' w/o a problem though.

[Rudy]

10-10-925 then 1 A/C and number.

Dial all in a row, no waiting for prompts.

5 cents a minute North America US & Canada, day nite weekends etc

Billing comes on your regular phone bill