Pricey Landline....

Month after month my Verizon phone bill shows up in the mailbox. You may recall that I have both telephone service with them, and DSL internet. While I'm generally satisfied with my internet hookup (hard to beat 768/128 for a broadband bargain $17.99 monthly), I always feel like I'm overpaying on the phone portion of the bill.

The phone, on the other hand, is just under $25 for a traditional phone service. You know, the ol' fashioned copper lines that many have gotten away from. I generally don't make that many calls in a month as I use my cell phone on nights & weekends, and for any long distance or regional calling. The landline is really more for incoming calls, and God forbid, for 911.

When I look at the $25 charge, and the 6 calls that I made on the line a month, and realize that it's close to $4 a call, it starts to become rather silly, and clearly there should be a better way.

When folks think about VoIP, the name that instantly comes to mind is Vonage. There $25 plan gives an all-you-can-eat, err, I mean talk, approach to phone service. While it works out to more than what I'm paying after taxes, there's still something attractive about it, and represents a better value. I recently learned that folks are getting the service for even less which could force my hand (like $14.99 monthly before taxes). The other stumbling block is that my DSL modem is downstairs, and my base phone with answering machine is upstairs. Recall that the Vonage box needs to plugged into the phone and the internet. While I'm not enthusiastic about running my own Cat 5e cable, I'm pretty sure a quality powerline network adapter could bridge this gap.

Yesterday, Bill posted about a new service from T-Mobile, my dreaded cell phone company. It's called the Talk Forever Home Phone. For customers with existing plans of greater than $39 monthly, which I fit into, for a mere $10 a month, they offer an all-you-can-talk phone plan. Sweet! Unfortunately, it's in limited areas (and not by me yet), but while I've been unenthusiastic about their Hot Spot At Home plan (special phones, new router, and mediocre service), this new plan did get my interest. True, I still have the issue about the network box, but for such a low monthly rate, and the ability to keep my home phone number, it could be worth the effort.

The one stumbling block in all of this is that any of these new services rely on a fast internet connection. With a DSL upload speed of 128 (kbps) I'm not sure that I'll be able to both surf and use the phone simultaneously, so this is going backwards to the days of dialup. Not to mention that my DSL is tied to my landline account, and I'm not getting DSL without the phone (smart phone company folks).

I think at this point, the best thing to do is to wait for my phone contract to expire in a few months (begrudingly paying for the overpriced copper in the meantime). Then I can get Fios, which I believe is 10/2 mbps in my area for $39.99. Then depending on the triple play offer, I'll either go with "Fios Phone" or a Vonage service.

It seems to me that at this point, while phone service used to be the star of the show, it's become a secondary player to the internet service, and used mostly for retaining customers.