Is Cheap Phone Service
Really Cheap?

Do you know how to shop for cheap phone service and free phone calls? Here I break down the basic components of both residential and business phone service. Once you know what the piece parts are, you can determine your best value.

By the way, anytime you see a link or recommendation for a specific type of service, you can be assured it's a good one, based on my years of experience as an industry insider in the telecom industry!

There are a number of separate articles below that drill down into specific needs like home phone plans, best long distance phone service, cheap business phone service and so on, scroll to the bottom to see them all.

OK, here we go!

First off cheap phone service is cheap only because it costs less than you're paying now – right? Think about it, it's all relative.

For instance I pay $15.00 per month for my cheap VoIP home phone plans, and I get unlimited long distance with that. My mom out in Arizona pays $25.00 and then pays per minute for long distance (Ok, I know you're saying, hey, you should take better care of your mom) But here's the catch, she's got a great deal, and I'll tell you why later.

The basic components of both residential and business phone service are:

• Local service – Calls in your local calling area. This means generally all calls where you DO NOT have to dial a "1" in front of the number.
• National Long Distance (LD for short) – Any call in the USA where you DO have to dial a "1" when making the call.
• International Long Distance (International calls for short) - Any call where you have to dial a Country code like "01" before you make the call.

If you make a lot of International Calls click here and check out this International "best rates" rate finder

Here's What The Phone Company
Doesn’t Want You To Know:

• Local calling plans are generally "unlimited" but don't have to be. If you don't make many local calls, then why not have a plan that simply charges you buy the minute? It might be cheaper cheap phone service! This is called "metered" service.

• Long Distance calling plans are generally metered service (by the minute), but can be unlimited. It makes sense to buy unlimited only if costs you less over a 12 month period than the metered variety.

This is what my mom does. She likes to pay by the minute, because she doesn’t make long distance calls a lot every month. So she pays as she goes and has cheap phone service!

• International calls almost always are metered rates (charged per minute) on regular wire line phone service, but can under certain circumstances become free international long distance and free internet calls using VoIP Phone service. Generally this is still the domain of calling over the internet from on the same service providers' network like Skype or similar.

In a nutshell, we're simply looking to figure out how many minutes of each variety we're using monthly, multiply it by the pennies per minute rate we know we can get, and then buy cheap VoIP "unlimited" service for that variety or service if it's cheaper than doing metered service. Make sense?

So one person may get the best cheap phone service by having unlimited local, but metered LD, and no International calling plan (no monthly set cost).

Another person who travels a lot, might be best served in having no local phone, and using their cell phone to "dial around" their cell carrier and use a super low cost International plan. If this sounds like it's up your alley click here to visit FlexTelONE and tell them E-Dude sent you!

I have laid it all out on the following pages – logically sliced and diced so you can dig in and save big! Many of the cheap phone service providers I've chosen for you to review will have calculators on their sites to help you chose the best plans.

Here's another cheap phone service E-Dude super secret… In a general sense, the more service you put on ONE WIRE or service coming into your home or business, the better off you are.

Think about it. Why pay the cable company to bring in your TV signal, and then pay the phone company for their wire and service for phone service, and then pay someone else for internet service?

So here we have either the TRIPLE PLAY (residential service) or INTEGRATED SERVICES (business offerings) where the provider gives us everything we need on one set of wires or maybe even wireless if possible.

Triple Play – Sounds Fun!

TRIPLE PLAY for residential or SOHO needs is a great way to go for cheap phone service. You buy the 1) TV / video, 2) internet and 3) phone from a single provider. They give you big breaks for doing so, and being able to deliver it all on one line coming into your home.

For triple play residential or SOHO (no more than two phone lines) click here and put in your address to see what services are available. You can buy on-line in the privacy of your own home, and these are all name brand providers I know will take care of you. Tell them E-Dude said to give you the "Brother In Law" deal.

Having said that, maybe you already have some Internet access. If so, wanna do VoIP?

I think I said that to little Sally Adams in 3rd grade… <;-)) Anyway if you need unlimited local calling and only one or two phone lines, the very best cheap phone service is at this link, click here to visit MyPhoneCompany. these guys are very good and been around a good long time.

Note that the VoIP.com company at the banner below is a good company, but so is MyPhoneCompany and they also have excellent customer service and more flexible plans.

Hey, how about this! Virtual Alternative Secondary Phone Numbers

Establish a Virtual Phone Number wherever your friends or family live, they can then call you for the price of a local call! Is that cool or what! These are numbers that ring to your primary line.

How does it work? You live in Florida and your area code is 407, your brother lives in New York with a 212 area code, you can actually get a virtual phone number in 212 that rings to your 407 line, so it's a local call. Click on the banner below and look for it under "features".

If you don't wanna do VoIP, have regular phone lines and want cheap long distance phone plans then click here, these guys have been around forever and haven't raised their rates for something like two decades!

Besides they have a cool purple Star Trek looking logo, so they can't be all bad, right? <;-)

The Business Version
Of Triple Play Is
Integrated Services

INTEGRATED SERVICES for small and even mid-sized businesses is a great deal, because we provision all dial-tone (local, LD and International) phone services on the same wires as the internet access.

I'm not gonna blow the whole wad here; see my Business Phone Packages article for more on this. Or click here to visit the boys at Shop For T1, they have the whole comparative pricing thing down pat. Pick "Integrated Access" as your service type, then follow the bouncing ball.

For more cool SOHO stuff like free internet calls and cheap VoIP, visit my SOHO corner.

Quality Still Counts
In Cheap Phone Service

So, one of the catches here is that once we go "unlimited" on either our local, LD, or International calling we have to be careful that we're sticking with a quality carrier that will make our cheap VoIP or free internet calls sound "toll quality" as we've been used to with our landline calls.

Might sound easy, but it's not. Why? Because if we're doing VoIP, we can have problems with VoIP service that stem from our internet connection.

We can also have issues with the provider not having proper Quality Of Service within their own network. Heck, we can have the provider simply not really caring if they have any real capacity to let our calls go through properly, cause they are too cheap themselves!

Remember
Cheap Phone Service
Is Relative!

We want to pay less than we are now, but also have decent quality calls, especially if we're a business customer.

As much as I don't like to say it, telephone service is a pretty complicated thing, and once we leave good old "Ma Bell" and introduce a whole bunch of variables, it's easy to end up in the ditch with poor service.

This goes double for cheap VoIP phone service, so check out my VoIP Tutorial article to learn more about this stuff.

In the long run what we need to do is have someone we trust tell us which cheap phone service is best for our needs. That's why you have me! E-Dude's got your back… I've waded through all these plans and have set out the best deals for you, no matter what you need.

So take a look at the articles below that are part of this section and visit the different vendors I've set aside here, stick with E-Dude's picks here for cheap phone service and I won't steer you wrong!

As always, click here if you've got any questions, that's what I'm here for!

I Love free internet calls and all this VoIP stuff!

Wanna call over 35 countries throughout the world for less then 10¢ per minute! KallCent$ has provided discount long-distance service since 1996, offering U.S. customers the least expensive international long distance rates to virtually every country in the world. Click on the banner below.

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