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Experiences with Alternate Local Phone Companies?
chasmosis asks: "In the last few months, I've moved about 25 minutes outside of St. Louis and discovered that the local baby bell charges exorbitant rates (at least in my view). I've explored alternate local carriers like Sprint and others who have had uncompetitive prices, poor customer service records, or were unclear on things like 'specifically what exchanges can I call that are still considered local calls'. Right now I'm on SBC's Metro plan where I can call to and from much of the St. Louis local area as a local call instead of a toll call. I'd dump my landline entirely and get another cell if I didn't need it for dial up internet, since I live in the sticks and there is no cable, no DSL, and the top speed for dialup is 28.8. What are other people using for alternatives to their local telephone provider? What are your experiences, good and bad?"
Check out http://www.saveonphone.com. They've got a listing of some of the top alternate carriers with their basic stats listed. Many of these use the same lines as major carriers so you're not necessarily getting a lower-quality service.
...ken
Maybe of these can switch your local and long distance. I went with Total Call International due to the cheap intrastate rates...which often are more expensive than LD rates. And they bill every 6 seconds with no monthly fee. So when MCI called to earn my love back and I told 'em the rates, the rep said
"Oh...well, yeah. You got us beat."
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
Mcleod is available throughout much of the midwest and doesn't completely suck. I've been with them for about two and a half years now and haven't had any major problems with 'em. They offer all the same services as Ameritech/SBC/whatever and cost a little less. And local calls are just that, local no extra charge. I'd never even heard of "local toll calls" before reading this article.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I use my cell exclusively for voice. So when I needed static IPs for my servers, and thusly DSL, I called up the good 'ol local monopoly, er, I mean, phone provider here in nyc - Verizon - and it was a whopping $19 for me to just have a line. I told the Verizon lady, no caller id, no long distance, no nothing - there will never be a phone hoooked up to it.
Turns out, the Verizon charge is about $9 and the other $10 are taxes. But still, it's a rip. That means if every citizen in nyc has a land line, there's gonna be at least $100,000,000 in tax revenue. A month! How about a tax break on that?
Check out the "Vision" service from Sprint. It's an extra $10 a month for unlimited usage. There is a USB data cable which lets your sprint phone (I have a Sanyo 4900) work as a USB modem - and yes, it works with Linux. The Sprint Vision service gives you a digital connection at about 56k.
They don't advertise it any more and they don't sell the cable any more. Check ebay for the cable and make sure you have a compatible phone.
Here's a HOWTO for it.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
There are a few basic kinds of CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers).
1 - Local Facilities based: The CLEC has an independent CO (switch site) in the local area and can either extend facilities to you (not likely unless you are buying 2-4 DS1s+ of service) or extend POTS/DSL/DS1 service via copper loops from the closest LEC (local exchange carrier - the old baby bell) exchange.
2 - Non-Local Facilities Based: The CLEC's switch is located somewhere else and simply trunked into the area. They CLEC may or may not have direct colocation in the LEC's COs.
3 - Reseller: The CLEC just takes your order and passes it to the LEC to fulfill. Its still the LECs lines, switch, numbers, etc.
There are also myriad variations on the above. In general if you can get service from a local facilities based CLEC go for it. Most of them aren't really setup for residential (not profitable), but you may get lucky in your area.
A friend of mine got rid of his land line, but there was a fairly serious (for him) consequence he didn't plan on. The local pizza places don't deliver to cell phones.
I recently bought a Sony Ericcson ti-68 from amazon. It was free after rebates, and it is bluetooth enabled. T-Mobile has an internet service plan that is about $20 for unlimited access, I think. Pair the phone with a blue tooth enabled computer and you get about a 56K connection. I tried it while on vacation, and it worked great with my 12" PowerBook. I don't know if this is feasible with Linux or Windows, but you might look into it.
So, your 911 call doesn't exactly have traditional 911 priority, you don't speak to an operator who has your name,address and phone number on her screen, and they won't know where to send the police if your call gets disconnected.
I have both cable and DSL. The cable costs $42/month and yields real throughput of up to 250k *bytes* per second. The DSL costs $120/month and comes with 5 IP addresses, at a whopping 144k *bits* per second. I live about 2000 feet too far away from the CO for real DSL, and could originally only get iDSL. I'm told I can finally get real DSL now, and it would only cost me $400/month for 1.5 megabit (about 190k bytes per second). If I want to give up having fixed IP addresses, I'd only have to pay $90/month for 1.5 megabit. What a deal! Twice as expensive as cable with no fixed IP addresses or 10 times as expensive with fixed IP.
Because of this, almost everyone in my area has cable, and the throughput seems not to suffer. Of course, some day it might start to suck, and since there's no SLA, we'd have to live with it. But even then it will probably always beat my DSL line, hands down.
Although I am not quite in the same boat as the poster, the following combo works out pretty well for me.
v combo I could come up with. $150, flat, no long distance charges, etc. I know a lot of people who pay $150 alone for their landline or cell phone bills alone. Other than rent, food, and auto-related stuff, that is the extent of my fixed monthly expenses.
Just for reference, I live in northern San Diego county, California. I can not get DSL (too far from C.O.) nor can I get fixed-point wireless (we tried, but there are trees in the way and my H.O.A. sort of owns the trees). I run a business from my home. The services I use serve me for both personal and business use.
I have cablemodem service with Cox. It rocks. The downstream is awesome. At night it has sometimes even beat the supposed 3mb maximum that the cable company claims.
I can get an analog phone line from PacBell or a hybrid phone line from the cable company, where they put a box similar to a cablemodem at my junction (demarcation) point. I don't have either.
I have $39 service with Vonage, as many other posters do. At least with my net service, it is awesome. Sounds about as good as a land-line and has every feature you could ever want included in the base price... Unlimited LD, caller id, callwaiting, callwaiting id, voicemail, incredible forwarding options, etc.
I have a cell phone from Sprint. Sprint isn't the best company around, but the damn thing works and is priced right. I have more minutes than I could ever dream of using and for like $14 a month I put my mom's handset on my account. Soak up those extra minutes! When I get around to buying a new phone I will be able to use their 64-144k service.
Lastly I have a J2 fax mailbox. It gives me send and receive fax capabilities without paper cuts, a fax machine, or even an analog modem. It just works. About $10 a month.
I keep the vonage number on no-answer forward to my cell and everything eventually dumps into my voicemail.
This entire combo runs me about $150 a month for basically the ultimage telephone/pager/cell/internet/fax/voicemail/cable
You must realize that if you have a telephone jack in your house you may dial 911. 911 is a public service and requires NO telephone company. So why would you use Vonage to dial 911 when you can from a local land line for free???