Residential and Small Business VoIP Rates Crushed

VoIP telephony, sometimes called broadband phone service, has gone from a geeky computer app to full-fledged competition for mainstream telephone service in the course of a few years. The enablers for this have been the widespread replacement of dial-up Internet access with broadband services and the installation of Internet connections in small businesses. But just as ample rain leads to bumper crops, ample broadband has led to a bumper crop in VoIP providers. One of the most aggressive in this space, Phone Power, is now tweaking the industry by causing rates to plunge to less than $15 a month on unlimited residential and small home-based business service plans. That cost plummets even lower to just over $8 a month when you prepay for a year.

Granted, you can still pay even less for specialized services such as MagicJack and Skype. But both of these require you to use your computer as part of the phone system. When the computer is off, so is your phone. Plus you’ve got to deal with potential contention for processor resources when you try to use the phone while you are actually using the computer.

Phone Power and many other VoIP services that vie for your telephony dollar don’t work that way. They share your broadband connection in lieu of a traditional telephone line but don’t have any connection to the innards of your computer. Instead, they use a hardware device called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor to turn a phone jack into an Ethernet jack that connects into your router or broadband modem. Phone Power gives you the adaptor free while you are using their service. Some other vendors also do that or you can buy an adaptor at your local electronics outlet.

The cost of VoIP phone services seems to have settled into the $20 to $30 range for aggressive services that you see heavily advertised and somewhat more for some of the familiar name bundles. That’s not unreasonable, considering that VoIP has typically offered both unlimited local and long distance calling. A traditional landline plan is local service only with an additional per-minute charge for long distance calls. Additional features, such as Caller ID, are usually offered as ala-carte add-ons to your basic service.

The big telephone carriers also offer competitive bundles of local and long distance minutes or unlimited calling plans with popular features included. But at $14.95 a month? Try twice that. When you look at Phone Power’s 12 Month Prepay option, the difference is even more pronounced. This is a new customer promotional rate for $199.95 prepaid for a year’s service. But as part of this special promotion, Phone Power will include a 2nd year’s service for free. That brings your equivalent monthly rate down to about $8.33 for unlimited calling to US and Canada numbers and free lease of the telephone adaptor.

This offer is intended for residential addresses, including home office users and home-based businesses. If your business is large enough to have its own physical address, there are also business packages available for single and multi-line users, with a wealth of add-ons and upgrades to give you the power of a on-site PBX phone system without the capital expense.

If you are considering switching your residential or business phone service or are just feel you are paying too much for the service that you have now, you should take a look at Phone Power Residential and Business VoIP before you commit to buying any other service.

600,000 Inquiries, No Waiting

Don't you hate the amount of time and frustration it takes to buy anything significant? How about telecommunications services? The worst, right? If you're not totally confused by who to call, you're stuck with music on hold. Or they ask you to fill out a form and wait a couple of weeks for an answer. Like I said, the worst.

Well, forget all that nonsense. How would you like to find out how much a T1 line is going to cost or if there is Metro Ethernet service nearby in less than a minute? How would you like to be able to do that any time, day or night? Well, you can. The service is available all the time, it's online and it's automatic. That means no waiting for someone to "get around to you."

The service is referring to is called GeoQuote (tm), the patented telecom pricing application that's revolutionized how business people buy voice and data telecom services. Let's give it a try right now. Don't worry, its take less time to generate a T1 line quote than to read the rest of this article. Start by visiting our T1 Rex site hosting the GeoQuote engine. Click and it will open in a new page or tab.

Select your service type from the drop down menu in the Shop For T1 box. "Data" is already selected, but you can change that to "Voice" for digital telephone line services such as ISDN PRI for your PBX system. Or select "Integrated Service" if you'd like to have both telephone and Internet service brought in on a single line. That often saves money for smaller businesses.

Fill-in the other blanks, which should only take a few seconds. Be sure to list your business landline number for the main phone. This is used by the system to determine service availability and price, so don't put in a cell number unless you've got a new location that doesn't have landline phone service yet. When done click on the "Step 2" button.

On the next page you have an opportunity to refine the type of service you are looking for. T1 is selected, but you can change that if you want Frame Relay, Server Colocation, DS3, ISDN Service, or even Fixed Wireless Broadband. There's a comment box available. It's not needed for automatic quotes on services such as T1, ISDN PRI or DS3. But it does provide helpful detail to the Shop For T1 consultants to help you get the best pricing, even on services you didn't know were available.

Fill in the box showing the installation address (business location, as these services aren't generally suitable for home users), select if you'd like quotes to include a router or not, specify new or existing service, and number of locations. You can also specify if you'd like someone to call you immediately, contact by email or if you are just window shopping. When done, click on the "continue" button.

Within a matter of seconds, you'll get a page displaying line prices for your particular location. These are highly accurate and represent prices you'll actually pay for 1, 2 or 3 year leases. The consultant who calls may know of special offers that run for a limited time, so you could actually pay less than what the screen says.

That's it for the general GeoQuote inquiry. There's another version that's targeted specifically for finding Metro Ethernet service. All you need to input is an address and you'll get a map showing the nearest locations with fiber optic connections. The closer they are, the more chance you have of getting Ethernet, Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet service at very reasonable prices. Try the Ethernet Buildings search now and see for yourself. It's also fully automated and available 24/7.

Now wasn't that a much more pleasant experience that what you usually go through to get pricing on business voice and data services? Over 600,000 other users feel the same way. Be sure to bookmark those GeoQuote search engine pages. You may want to come back and price another service later.