What Phone Company do you Use?

I'm paying about $62 per month for AT&T with unlimited local & long distance. What are you guys using and what are you paying?

Vonage looks interesting, but how does the phone adaptor work? I know nothing about this kind of service. Any drawbacks or problems?

I don't care about voice mail or other frills, but I wouldn't mind caller ID.

I'm looking for the cheapest way to get unlimited local and long distance within the U.S.

Embarq.
Local $16.50
Caller ID $8.50
after taxes and surcharges $39.15 per month.
I don't make a lot of long distance calls.
Last one I made was to umm some dude in New Mexico.. lol

pirate_girl said:

Embarq.
Local $16.50
Caller ID $8.50
after taxes and surcharges $39.15 per month.
I don't make a lot of long distance calls.
Last one I made was to umm some dude in New Mexico.. lol

Click to expand...

I used to have Embarq as well with the same plan as you CB.. was almost exactly the same amount. We made a whole 32 LD calls last month from home... I called them Monday and shut off the LD.. I keep the local only for 911 and PPV hookup to the dish for now... Ethernet cable will be hooked up by weekends end so that reason will be gone. Cell service is sketchy at home so I wil wait until we get the repeater installed to dump it all together...

I use our cable company.

I think it's $39 with all the taxes and such. For another $4 or $5 a month, they added another phone number (using distinctive ring service). I can then use that as a fax or whatever. It's worth it as I then know which phone number was called and answer (or not) accordingly.

This might not suit everyone but it works for me:

$11 basic (local only) flat rate phone service from ATT. On one line, ATT dsl is also on that line while at the ranch I have an independent ISP who contracts with ATT to put signal over their wire. Both overall phone&DSL locations cost the same.

For non-local calls, we have several 670 minute/ $20 phone cards from Costco. Each phone has a card's number/access code embedded in speed dial #1 and 2 so it's simple to use it. You recharge them keying in your credit card number. If one card's balance is low, just grab a different phone.

We have used this arrangement for 10+ years now, including the kids using the same cards to call us from college. It works fine. I don't think there is any cheaper way to maintain phone service.

We use AT&T. I have no idea what it costs, I don't pay the bills. What we have for service is unlimited local, unlimited long distance, unlimited Canada and some sort of overseas plan. I can probably drop the overseas plan now, we don't use it anymore.
If I had to pay a per call/min charge for phone use, I'd be in the poor house by now. The little woman lives on the phone sometimes and all but one of her frequently called numbers are out of state. Her brother lives in Canada with all of his family. So I think they lose money on me each month.

Comcast Cable. I think $39, plus an extra $10 for a second phone number and line. I also have their cable and internet.

California said:

This might not suit everyone but it works for me:

$11 basic (local only) flat rate phone service from ATT. On one line, ATT dsl is also on that line while at the ranch I have an independent ISP who contracts with ATT to put signal over their wire. Both overall phone&DSL locations cost the same.

For non-local calls, we have several 670 minute/ $20 phone cards from Costco. Each phone has a card's number/access code embedded in speed dial #1 and 2 so it's simple to use it. You recharge them keying in your credit card number. If one card's balance is low, just grab a different phone.

We have used this arrangement for 10+ years now, including the kids using the same cards to call us from college. It works fine. I don't think there is any cheaper way to maintain phone service.

Click to expand...

Yep! We do the same thing . It has worked well . I bet we don't spend 10 bucks a month on LD .

We get ours through Daktel, which is a local server. Our phone, internet, and cable TV is bundled into one package for $95/mo. We do not have LD on our phone since we have great cell service here and use that.
About five years ago, Daktel began setting all this up by trenching fiber optic cable all over town. Cable is very clear, internet is fast and reliable, phone works pretty good, though I seldom use it.
We're happy with them. The other cable company is another story.

We have Verizon for the house phone on a pay per call basis with no package and no long distance. Total is about $25 per month just for the right to receive calls from telemarketers. I think in five years we have made perhaps a total of 30 minutes worth of outgoing calls on the house phone, we use the cell phones for all calls, including long distance.

I got set up with Vonage just last month. I'm very happy with the service. So simple to hook up, a 5 year old could do it. Quality is the same as our old AT&T service.
I used to pay AT&T 70+ dollars a month depending on long distance fees and I had two lines.
Vonage gives two line hook ups. As I read it if I hook a 2nd phone into line two, that phone will ring when someone is using line 1. The 2nd line is the same number as line number 1. I haven't tried this feature yet. I do have 8 features like caller ID and some others I can't remember. Free long distance to all the US, Canada and some Europiean countries. All for $24.95 + texes & fees it comes to $30 and change.

Edit to add:
Correction: I had Alltel for local service and At&T for long distance for the 70+ dollar a month bill.

Embarq for local service - because they're the only company out here.
can't use cable, because they're not out here either.
fiber optic stops at the section line 1/2 mile s of me, so no high speed option, either.
long distance is supplied by the electric company at $.059 a minute flat rate 24/7. (and since just aboutr everything is long distance, I spend between $7-25 a month for long distance depending on how much tara talks to her family.

T-Mobile (formerly VoiceStream). GF'd in at $20/mon for 500min. But I rarely use it since I have a company cell (Verizon) that's a freebie, Freebie, FREEBIE!

Just started Skype and will probably be using it regularly. Used DialPad when it was free. Does DialPad still exist?

The only local provider in NM is QWest and they ticked me off but good. Never again, never again.

Had AT&T for years. For my wife and myself it cost about $100 a month. We couldn't use it at home because we had no signal. There was only one place on the driveway that we get one bar and make calls. We've had various friends come stay, using different services, and it was always the same poor reception. On AT&T we rolled over 10,000 minutes and they started taking them back. We cancelled both phones. I went to Walmart and got two basic $15 TracPhones and two $100 cards for a years of service and 440 minutes (I think) of use each. Lo and behold I can make calls from INSIDE the house. Reception is good anywhere around the property. We've used them in Florida and Tennessee and all points in between and never had a problem. It has caller ID and all the basic functions and after 6 months I still have almost 250 minutes left. It's the best decision I've made in a while.

We don't use them very much, mainly to talk to each other and in case of emergencies. I don't need a phone to take pictures, listen to music, read emails, surf the web, get stock quotes, send text messages, make coffee or cater to my ego. I need a phone to make the occasional call and that's it. For my purposes the TracPhone is great and I'd recommend them to anybody who isn't a power user.

trackfone good.
even though my wife calls mine to find me at Lowes...

it's been very handy while we've been building the house - as it makes it possible to call in a change order when one of us is going on a supplies run in town.