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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.
I use Vonage as my non-cell phone. However this is because I do have a Cable modem connection. So this is no help to you.
If you can live with the Cell phone for phone service, you might want to look to DirectWay, or StarBand (or others) to provide Internet service. Response times might not be as fast as dialup, but even with fair use caps, you will probably get better data rates than dialup.
Good luck.
-Rusty
You never know...
I'd get the cell for all the voice calls and just keep a very cheap, basic landline service with no long distance plan just for your internet access (assuming your ISP is a local call).
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.
and the largest bell 'competitor' around here is birch telecom. they compete on price and service, but afaik still use sbc's line facilities. due to anti-monopoly laws, they're forced to allow this.
i've never used their residential service but i know of some small businesses that use them and were pleased with the service.
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?
Talk America gives us good service. We pay 50 bucks / month for unlimited local and long distance (within SE Michigan). It's cheap to call my Mum in the UK. The only problem we have is that ameritech used to 'pulse' the dialtone to tell us we had voicemail.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
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.
Mind you the through-put is about 1b/s.
Good luck Kimosabi!
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
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.
They are small, only in Calif and Minn. but there service is fully fiber to the house, they offer phone, cable, and TV at SUBSTANTIALLY LOWER prices than COMCRAP and they offer a better selection of channels. The only downside is the phone is not self powered like the old landline princess phones on a ma-bell connection. So when the power goes out, your phone is out as well :(
but I've got a cell for emergencies like that.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Another option is an idea for a grass-roots company to bring high-speed to the last mile...
good luck.
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
Hi!
What may be a very good option for you to consider is improving your Internet connectivity and then exploring VOIP (Voice Over IP). DirecTV has a satellite data arm called DirecWay that offers two-way broadband via satellite dish. (We have considered it, but only as a fallback to our existing circuit.)
Once you have the broadband, look at VOIP...
Once you have broadband, you might want to look at VOIP, especially Vonage. They will assign you a number and provide "local" calling service to every exchange in your "home" area code(s). VOIP quality is improving, and there are more and more people in the newsgroups providing helpful advice.
Is this the BEST solution?
Your mileage may vary. This is certainly a cutting edge solution--and, as the old adage goes, it may be hard to stay on the cutting edge without bleeding. If you're looking for better bandwidth anyway, it's worth taking a look at.
I've recent switched to Excel for all my calls.
I pay about $50 a month or so (I think closer to $60 after taxes) for unlimited long distance and local calls, plus caller id, call waiting, forwarding and several other options that I don't even use.
Service has been good. Billing has been accurate and on time. I don't have any complaints at all. Particularly since I'm no longer being forceably FDA'd by SBC anymore.
I can't find the url for the offer I have. However, if you drop an email to deech "at" free "dash" source "dot" com, I'll be happy to send you the phone number from my flier.
(quotes are punctuation discriptions, not text)
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
And get a card like this for your laptop/desktop.
Sierra Wireless Aircard 555
You should check out whether your cable company offers digital phone service. Cox Communications does in many locations, and they claim to have similiar uptime to regular phone service, but much cheaper prices.
I would have gone with them when I moved to California, but at the time they didn't have the service available in my neighborhood. I'm still hoping to check them out sometime.
I've been using one for about six months. $50/month with unlimited long distance (and about $5 for the line charge to the CLEC). NOTE: I also shill for the service. Click link for details. Yes, it will hit you with some MLM info. But just click on the 'local phone service' button.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
$50 a month for unlimited local and long distance; call waiting, caller ID including on call waiting, call forwarding, and some other feature. I like using my landline because even if I use my cordless, my head doesn't hurt after using the phone, unlike with my mobile phone. And just the satisfaction in knowing that my money is in no way going to SBC's profits brings a smile to my face. I look forward to telephone service via Comcast Cable next year. The Baby Bells are as good as dead...and not in a Whedon-esque version of *dead* either...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
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 the Sanyo 4900 and I got the cable at Radio Shack for $20. It didn't come with the software, but they don't have any software for Mac OS X so I didn't care. Mac OS X does have built-in drivers for the phone so I was set.
$10 a month for unlimited data is great. For a while it was our primary Internet connection, now we've got a cable modem. No additional charges (we were on a lot) and >56k speeds. This is our only phone and it's been great.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
This is going to be month two on Vonage for me (voip phone service through a cable modem) and its a good service but...
1. They have significant voicemail problems. I think the consensus at dslreport's voip forums is that they are overselling/pushing their VM system too hard or they just expanded too quickly. Its not just lost VM but sometimes my phone wont ring when VM is enabled. Workaround: use a plain-jane answering machine. Afterall, you get a normal POTS phone jack from the Cisco ATA they send you.
2. Be mindful of you upload speed and what apps you're running on your home lan. You don't want to use this when kazaa or whatever is maxing out your upload cap. Throttle bandwidth to leave yourself 100kbs. Vonage also has a 30kbs compressed codec for people without much bandwidth.
3. Of course, if you lose network connectivity (or power for that matter) you lose phone. That probably isn't much of a concern in a world of cell phones, but its something to consider if you don't have a cell phone and are far from your neighbors.
The pros
1. It sounds excellent. Its POTS quality as far as I can tell. Think of it as MP3 compared to CD.
2. If you're already paying for broadband its a smart investment. Telling the local monopoly to piss off is very gratifying. Not to mention you have built in number portability. Just plug that Cisco ATA anywhere and you have your old phone number.
3. The geek quotient of using VoIP without the other party know or asking, "What are you calling me on, a damn tin can?"
ok in what world is cable more reliable than DSL?
I can't honestly speak for anywhere but my locale, but here you recieve a static IP with DSL, you have a fixed guaranteed bandwidth rate up and down, it considered a business class connection with equivelent response and support, and it costs the same as cable.
Cable internet on the other hand, has NO guaranteed bandwidth at all, it's 100 people on a t1 and all 100 are told they have a 1.544mbps connection, if you read the fine print, the cable company doesn't guarantee your speed at ANY rate, not even 56k. They also consider it theft if you use a router and nat your connection! It violates their terms of service. You have agreed not to run a server of any kind. You have a capped upload speed that is slower than your down speed. And for this I'm going to pay about $5/months more than DSL???
Is my area an exception or do you really think of a shared consumer grade connection as more stable than a guaranteed business class connection?
The Vonage service doesn't require that your PeeCee is on; the phone device itself is hooked directly to your router.
...)
(I don't have one, but have kept an interested eye open toward it
S
(The term is "line powered".)
ISDN is not line powered, but it's still attached to 911 service. That said, there's a difference between "life line" and "911" service. And if your house is on fire, the first thing you should do is leave; call for help from somewhere else.
Although MCI is one of my clients, I pretty much have no problem being critical of their services when I need to. (I certainly don't have a problem switching between any carrier to find a better rate or service.)
About a year ago, I changed over to their combined local telephone service + long distance service called "The Neighborhood". Meaning, there is no longer a bill from a local telephone company. And there is no longer a bill from a long distance carrier. The Neighborhood provides both.
It is a flat-rate service for residential use for calling within the US. Meaning, make as many calls as you want, local or long distance, for as long as you want. At the end of the month, you get an itemized phone bill. It contains the flat-rate fee (approx $70 with all the charges added up for me) and lists each and every long distance call placed, and at $0.00.
For me it is several pages. And what is interesting is that when I add up all of the minutes, the end result averages to be as if I paid $0.02 per minute for long distance, and got my local telephone service for free.
Other features are thrown in. Voice mail. Three way. Speed dial. Caller ID. Call waiting. Call waiting Caller ID. Probably some other things I forget.
I had one outage that affected me and the entire residential area around me. It was fixed right along with everyone else.
Anyhow, I'm pleased. I was paying as much as SBC charged for local service + caller id + metro plan. Now I get that much, more, and unlimited long distance. My variable rate phone bills have disappeared.
Actually, out here in Palm Springs, CA the Roadrunner installation (cable) from Time Warner out performs any DSL connection out here. The connection is advertised as a 2MB down 400KB up, but many bandwidth tests have shown 2.8MB down and around 700 KB up. Those numbers shatter the marks any of our local DSL providers put up. It may be due to the fact that AOL/Time Warner implmented a fiber connection to each house for internet usage 2 years ago. It's about $8/mo. more than DSL, but well worth it in my opinion.
Computer Geek Proverb: Linux is only free if your time is worthless.
for the past couple years, i've been using rcn rather than sbc/pacbell for my local dialtone (650 area code). during that time, i've been paying a "local number portability fee" to -er- somebody. i recently moved about seven blocks. rcn doesn't provide service at my new location so i switched to att. could i move my phone number? ha!
Number portability means being able to keep the same number in the same location when you switch providers. It does not cover moving service to a different location.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
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.
Las Vegas, to name one example. We have both here in the office, and while there have been occasional issues with our cable-modem connection, our DSL usually only goes for a day or two before the modem needs to be reset.
Most of the DSL problems stem from the service provider not owning the lines...they're stuck with getting problems resolved on Sprint's schedule, whatever that happens to be. Given the weirdness I've also seen with voice service, I'm not convinced that Sprint is up to keeping any type of service (voice, DSL, whatever) going reliably. Cox doesn't have to deal with another company to get line issues, etc. resolved, and when a problem does pop up (which happens much less frequently than with the DSL), it usually gets taken care of fairly quickly. 24/7 tech support for cable-modem service is also a Good Thing.
(I should probably point out that both services are business-oriented, not the garden-variety residential service. I also have the same cable-modem service (at a lower speed level) at home. It costs no more than same-speed residential cable-modem service, but you can order static IPs for it, run whatever services you want, etc. As for speed vs. DSL, the cable modem almost always beats DSL for upstream and downstream transfers around here.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I got hit hard when I found out that CA had not only inter-LATA charges, but INTRA-LATA charges.. basically toll charges within a given area. Then I found out that Costco offered toll phone service.
Costco will give you any needed local or long distance charges through their provider. The company is MCI, but you are getting it as if you were going to provide it to other people rather than end user MCI service. You're getting what the phone companies buy.
5 cents a minute, no monthly fees, and you are billed on 6ths of a second. My SO and I got tired of times when the bill was lower than the cost of a stamp so we sent them a moderate size check and haven't heard from them since.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
...although their services may not be what you need.
I was running a small business which did about 10,000 minutes a month on its 800 number and had relatively modest data requirements. They split a T-1 (half voice lines, half data) and gave me a good price for three services (local phone, data and long-distance). The quality was far superior to what we had been getting from our Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) provider (Qwest).
If they offer what you need in your area, I would definitely recommend checking them out.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Probably where the cable company isn't a huge monopoly and the telco is.
I can't honestly speak for anywhere but my locale, but here you recieve a static IP with DSL, you have a fixed guaranteed bandwidth rate up and down, it considered a business class connection with equivelent response and support, and it costs the same as cable.
Sounds like business class DSL. Not all DSL providers offer this at reasonable rates. Many do not provide static IP with residential service.
Cable internet on the other hand, has NO guaranteed bandwidth at all, it's 100 people on a t1
This is a vast oversimplification. The "shared" bandwidth is usually much larger than a T-1, and really depends on how the cable company has wired your loop. Some cable companies are even running separate fiber to each house. Lest you put too much stock in DSL, bear in mind that while you may have a dedicated line between you and the CO, from that point on, you may be sharing rather congested lines with others. Obviously, business class customers will fare better.
They also consider it theft if you use a router and nat your connection!
Nonsense. This all depends on the cable company. My cable company allows several computers even on the residential service. They allow double-digits worth on their business class services. Guess how they recommend that you implement. NAT.
You have agreed not to run a server of any kind.
This frequently applies to DSL as well. I checked into it before going with cable modem.
You have a capped upload speed that is slower than your down speed.
You frequently see this on DSL connections, too. Particularly the residential kind.
And for this I'm going to pay about $5/months more than DSL???
Here, the services are about the same in cost.
Is my area an exception or do you really think of a shared consumer grade connection as more stable than a guaranteed business class connection?
Absolutely not. But, you have to compare apples to apples. Compare residential DSL with residential cable modem, and business DSL with business cable modem.
I used to have business class cable modem service, and I was getting 4Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, along with special DNS servers that responded faster than the residential ones. I was quite happy with this arrangement until I no longer needed those kinds of speeds. Service with my carrier has been wonderful -- although I've only had to call them with a problem once in the last couple years.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I had the same cable from Radio Shack, but this cable does not recharge while you are online, so after 3-4 hours you have to recharge your phone.
I searched on the net and found this cable that does recharge while you are on the net too, it's 15 bucks. I got the cable and returned by Radio Shack cable.
And the good part is that the cable came with a small size cd that had the required software for windows (and also PIM updating tools for the phone), but I never tried this out, cause I use my phone only in Linux.
And for the troll who posted that this is getting charged (I see you guys on sprintusers all the time), no.. there is no charge. It's unlimited =)
I used Telebright to figure out what was the cheapest provider for me (it turns out the cheapest provider was Power Net Global). Telebright is on the up-and-up and Consumer Reports actually forwarded me to that site (Consumer Reports strives to be as vendor-indifferent as possible). You type in your calling patterns (e.g. 600 minutes/month evening 200 minutes/month daytime) and they'll tell you what the cheapest plan is (from MCI, AT&T, Sprint, and other providers). Telebright makes their money by actually hooking you up with the LD provider (the LD provider pays the fee). Of course you can bypass them if you want to and sign up directly, but it doesn't save you any money. --Brian
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
Only on Slashdot.
Laws are for people with no friends.
As you can probably tell from my URL, my ISP is CoreComm. They are also my telco (I'm too far away from the CO for "real" DSL), as I still have dialup. They have been my telco/ISP for three years now, and my monthly charges are still about $15 a month less than what I was paying for Sum Bitchin' Communications (aka SBC) and Prodigy at the time.
The service from CoreComm has been pretty good (one day of outage over the past three years); a while back they added a spam filtering service that does a good job of catching spam and redirecting it out of my inbox. If you are looking for a new telco and they serve your area, you might check them out.
My biggest problem has been with MCI Worldcom, which was my former long distance carrier. Those assholes kept trying to bill me for service I did not have with them; as late as last summer they were trying to bill me for monthly service, even though CoreComm is my long distance company. After screaming at a couple of customer service reps, they finally closed my account. If financial shenanigans don't sink MCI Worldcom, bad service will.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
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???
And if your house is on fire, the first thing you should do is leave; call for help from somewhere else.
Our local fire dept. representative tells me that you are supposed to dial 911 first thing, then leave. Just dial the number and drop the phone. The 911 dispatcher is supposed to give priority to calls where the person on the other end does not respond after calling. And they don't have to ask for your location, it's already on their screen. This will get you the fastest response possible, and does not delay your exit more than a few seconds. Of course, if you can't find the phone, you might want to go to plan B and just leave.
Cavalier (CavTel) kicks much arse. For anyone on the East Coast who can get it, do so. They are about half the price of Verizon, offer more services, and are extremely helpful when you call them.
And plus you don't have to deal with Verizon.
The only problem is Verizon doesn't like it's customers switching, so as others have pointed out getting switched is an issue. Verizon screws up the orders on purpose usually meaning you will go a day or two without service. Verizon is losing you as a customer, so they really don't care if you complain or not. I know of a dozen or more people who have had them kill their service a few days early when switching.
And Verizon also tells techs your loop distance from the CO is too long when you order CavTel DSL. However a few persistant phone calls will force them to actually send out a tech who will report this is not the case.
In fact, two friends who had Verizon report to COVAD their loops were two small got sales calls from Verizon trying to sell them DSL just a week or so after they were told it wasn't possible.
My suggestiong is any solution other than Verizon is good. They are evil bastards.
-S
-Sternn