What Traditional Phone Companies Don’t Want You to Know About Internet Phone Service

Do you love saving money on your home or business expenses? Of course you do! And, when you can save as much as 50% a month on something you frequently use, the saving really start to add up. As you look over your monthly expenses, you have likely noticed a discouraging trend, your phone bill, like several other items, continues to go up. However, the service and features have stayed the same, but thanks to hidden charges, fees, higher taxes, and other cost, this is to be expected. Fortunately, you have a choice- thanks to technological advances, you can now swap your plain old telephone service (pots) for Internet phone service.

Unless you have managed-somehow- to avoid all forms of media in the past few years, you have seen or heard advertisements for Vonage, Magic Jack, Packet 8 and other  companies, all promising to lower your phone bill. Since many of us are a bit skeptical thanks to beliefs that “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”, it is no surprise that many of us have been unsure of whether these “lower phone services” really work. The answer is a resounding “yes!”

Internet phone service (also known as VoIP-Voice over Internet Protocol) offers you a wide variety of features and services for little or no cost. These features generally include:

• Free call waiting, call forwarding, caller ID, voice mail, and 3-way calling
• Being to have an area code for one city even if you live in another
• “Find me” service which is used with multiple lines
• The ability to take your business/home phone number with you when you travel
• The ability to make changes/adjustments to your account through the internet so there is no need to spend time on the phone waiting to talk to a CSR
• Lower taxes on phone service

Additional benefits of available with VoIP are having your own 800 number (small fee charged for this), low cost international calling, and unlimited calling within the continental US. Depending on the company, unlimited calling may either be included as part of a package deal or, in some cases, only cost as low as .02 cents a minute—either way, it is cheaper than “pots”.

Of course, like any new product/service, there have been problems. When internet phone service was first introduced in the late 1990’s problems such as reliability and not having 911 service existed. Today, while it may not be 100% problem free, VoIP is quite dependable and now has 911 services and although it does work slightly different from the traditional, it does work! Also, in the early days of internet phone service, you often had to give up your current phone number for an internet phone number. Now, you can usually-except in unique circumstances- keep your existing number.

Internet phone service is not going anywhere-except to get better. So, why not join the thousands of VoIP users and start saving money on your phone bill. There is nothing to lose and extra money to go into your pocket.