Need CHEEP! Long Distance Service

[sarah]

Anyone have any good recommendations for a long distance provider? There are like a million of them out there, but I've already found some hidden fees in a few of their rates ... looking for anything cheaper than 5¢/minute, which is what Verizon offers. Thanks!

[NAILER341]

use your cel phone after hours. if after hours starts at 9 move it to 6
i just switched my nextel service to unlimited everything. it will start next month. internet, in and outgoing, messages... whatever. all unlimited.

as far as house phone. i dont use it for long distance, but if i had to.. i would get one of those pain in the ass calling cards.

[seapahn]

I use a pingo calling card when traveling (mostly for dialup), faxing from home (I don't use the home phone and my line is only for local), and other times I may need to talk long distance and don't want to waste cel minutes. It's usually about 3 cents a minute in the US ... The only problem is they charge a monthly fee of 98 cents so if you don't use it, the money slowly goes away. Also, there is a surchage for using payphones. Other than that, it's been working great.

I used to use BigZoo a while back which was great but they went out of business

[goodtimes]

out here, Qwest had a deal where it was 5 cents/min up to $20 per month. After that, it was free. Of course, you have to have you local service with them too.

I got rid of them and just use my cell phone for everything (except internet....cable company gets that). I pay just under $50 a month for 400 "anytime" minutes, and unlimited nights/weekends. no long distance, no roaming if I am on their network....which is pretty damn big. When I have cell service, I have only seen it off network (roaming) once or twice in just over 2 years. I have only dropped a handful of calls...and most, if not all of those weren't me, it was the other person travelling in remote areas of Alaska, Colorado, etc.

[FRMNJJ]

Currently i pay 50 ish for the freedom plan with verizon which includes unlimited local and long distance anytime of the day. If you have a broadband with your cable company you can use Vonage which is 24.99 for the same deal Charter Cable is getting phone service in november which is through cable also and around the same price with unlimited calling.

Wish my Nextel worked at my house

[sarah]

Hmm, the pingo thing looks interesting ... and it's only 3.2¢ instead of 5¢ ... the problem is, since I'm rarely in the office, when I need to call the office or make other business calls, I've been eating up the home phone bill. Maybe adding to the wireless bill is the answer, I'll have to check the rates and compare everything. Verizon wireless doesn't offer an unlimited plan like Nextel, but it would be nice!

Thanks for the ideas guys!

[seapahn]

If you decide to try pingo, let me know and I'll shoot you a referral from their site and they'll supposedly credit $5 to my account. If you have a crappy email address you prefer to use for things like this, let me know.

[sarah]

If you decide to try pingo, let me know and I'll shoot you a referral from their site and they'll supposedly credit $5 to my account. If you have a crappy email address you prefer to use for things like this, let me know.

10-4 on the referral bonus. I'll let you know.

[igofshn]

Cell phone with Verizon, long distance is FREE. Why use a long distance carrier??????

[Navy-Jeepster]

Is this for a cell phone, or your home phone?

On our home phone, we pay a flat fee, and get free long distance.
It costs like 25.00 for unlimited long distance.
We have racked up some long distance time, and not been charged other then the 25.00 flat fee.
That is through SBC for our home phone though.

Navy-Jeepster
Gold Digger

[sarah]

Looking for a deal on the home phone. My mobile doesn't always have the best reception, plus, overages cost ALOT ... I don't think we can get SBC, but that sounds like an awesome deal – I will have to check on it again.

P.S. We sure do have alot of Verizon wireless customers here ... UNLIMITED "IN" RULES! I had almost 800 free minutes last month due to "in" calling. Woohoo!

[paulhead]

Got vonage, customer service sucks. You get some foreigners (they must be contracted with some cheaper international customer serv.) that have no clue what they're talking about or who they're working for. But have to admit the rates are low to include international.

[igofshn]

Looking for a deal on the home phone. My mobile doesn't always have the best reception, plus, overages cost ALOT ... I don't think we can get SBC, but that sounds like an awesome deal – I will have to check on it again.

P.S. We sure do have alot of Verizon wireless customers here ... UNLIMITED "IN" RULES! I had almost 800 free minutes last month due to "in" calling. Woohoo!

If you have overages, then get a plan with more minutes??????

[seapahn]

I have verizon wireless too but there are a few issues with using it for long distance (they may not be of any importance for some people):

1. It's hard to send faxes with a cel phone (it's possible but not very convenient and the signal has to be good).

2. Dialup with a cel is limited to 14.4 Kbps ... there are no local numbers for my ISP in a lot of places and some hotels charge per call for local calls too which sucks. With Verizon you can pay $80 a month and get high speed wireless but that's too much for me.

3. Now as far as cost:

The verizon wireless "America Choice" plan which I have, even if you use all the minutes for long distance and ignore all other taxes and fees you get:

450 min, 39.99 --> 8.89 cents a minute
900 min, 59.99 --> 6.67 cents a minute
1350 min, 79.99 --> 5.92 cents a minute
...
6000 min, 199.99 --> 3.33 cents a minute

So the point is, if you are going to use 6000 minutes a month and are willing to pay $200, then verizon works out to about the same. Otherwise, calling cards like PINGO can't be beat in terms of price. Now of course if you only have a cel phone and are going to use the minutes anyway to call the calling card 800 number, then it makes no sense to get a calling card

[king4wd2]

I use ACN Communications and it's 4.5cents a minute. An hour long distance call to Ohio is less then 5.00. Check with them Sarah.