Vonage and Beyond! Ditch your local telephone service…

Another phone service that we have been looking into outside of our Virgin Mobile cell phone plan is Vonage.
It is basically making phone calls through your broadband internet connection (DSL/Cable).
(*note: this works better using Cable internet since to use DSL you need to subscribe for a local phone line, which will be a decrease in savings)

Our current setup:

Our traditional basic local phone service comes out to about $25/month (taxes included).
Plus, We have an additional account for long distance, as well as a calling card (this stinks).

The switch:

Vonage has a basic plan of $15/month for 500 minutes (long distance included)! And a $25 unlimited plan as well.

I couldn’t find any negatives yet:

• You keep your existing phone (they send you an adapter to hook up to your DSL or Cable modem)
• You keep your existing phone # (as of now my phone # is unavailable to switch over)
• Lots of enhanced calling features (3 way, caller ID, voicemail etc.)
• NO CONTRACT! and first month free

The savings:

We currently spend about $420/year for local/long distance.
If we stay under 500 minutes/month and use Vonage…. we only pay $180/year for local/long distance calling!

Stay tuned… I’ll let you know how it goes, first we need our calling area to become available so I don’t need to get a new phone #.
Some other companies that offer this type of VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) service are SunRocket and Comcast.

5 comments October 12th, 2005

The BEST “Pay as You Go” cell phone plan?

I was really tired of my Sprint cell phone plan last year. Hated the contract, the really BAD customer service, the constant billing disputes and the budget line item of: “$500/year for cell phone plan”. Luckily our contract came to an end…. Freedom!

Now we are looking for a simple phone to use in case of emergencies and for just random convenience. I’ve priced 3 of the top companies below and found the first one - “Virgin Mobile” to look the best so far.

Most companies charge about 25c /minute…. no contracts/taxes etc etc….
You “pay as you go” by buying “buckets” of minutes at a time.

The thing you have to watch out for is that your minutes expire (usually after 30, 90, 180 days), so you need to keep your account active by re-adding minutes at the end of each quarter (e.g. Must spend $20 every 90 days to keep your account active for the Virgin Mobile plan).

Each of the company’s basic plans below come out to about $130/year per phone (assuming you meet {abide by} their minimum requirements). Doing this, I should now only need to pay approx. $130/year opposed to $500-$600 to have a cell phone for when I really need it.

I’ll let you know how it goes. Let me know if you have any better ideas.

• Virgin Mobile
• Cingular
• T-mobile

2 comments October 3rd, 2005