Plan Your Escape

A few years ago my wife and I reduced our monthly phone bill from almost $60 each month down to $22.59. How did we do it? VoIP.

VoIP

Otherwise known as Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP is a technology that lets you place and receive regular phone calls over your high speed internet connection instead of over a normal phone line.

Vonage

We chose to go with Vonage but there might be other VoIP providers in your area as well. We are using the Basic 500 plan which gives us 500 minutes of outgoing calls each month to anywhere in North America for $19.99. Incoming calls and calls to other Vonage customers don't count towards our monthly minutes. We've never gone over the 500 minute limit but additional minutes cost $0.05 per minute. Overseas calls are also billed by the minute at reasonable rates.

In addition, we have access to every call feature that I've ever heard of (and I few that I've never heard of!) all included in the $19.99. So features like Call Answer, Call Waiting & Call Forwarding and a ton of others are including at no additional charge. We can even check our phone messages online or have them emailed to us directly.

Bell

Our previous phone provider was Bell Canada. Right now Bell is advertising a basic home phone package starting at $29.95 which includes unlimited local calling and two call features. To be able to call long distance there is an additional $20 per month charge. So to get a similar level of service you'd be paying $56.44 after taxes compared to $22.54 with Vonage.

Downsides

Vonage does have a few downsides of which you should be aware:

• Your phone won't work if your internet goes down. So if your internet dies, you can't call to report the problem. When we first moved into our house there was an issue with the internet and I had to use a cell phone to report the problem.
• When the power goes out, so does your phone. A traditional phone service will still be available in a power outage where as VoIP will not.
• Using a 911 service is different with VoIP.

Despite these downsides, our savings of over $30 each month are definitely worth it.

Conclusions

If you are with a traditional phone service provider such as Bell, you should look into VoIP with Vonage or another local provider. We've found the service to be great and the savings to be even better!

I should also mention that this is not a sponsored post. I'm in no way affiliated with Vonage and my comments here are based solely on my experiences with their service.

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