Many herd have friends and down home scattered all for the empire (or the creation for that matter), and keeping in sway via telephone can ripen into pretty expensive. Most of my loved ones live far away, so to avoid long distance charges I always saved my calling for the weekend when cell phone minutes are free.

Although I love the portability of having a cell phone and will never give it up, I really hate the thought of paying $40 a month (or more) for a secondary phone service. Even though there are plenty of monthly minutes on my plan, I think about overage charges every time I use the darn thing. Waiting for the "free nights and weekends" time to make long distance calls saves money, but its really inconvenient. I wanted to be able to call anyone at any time and not have to worry about minutes or fees, so I gave internet phone service a try.

I cautiously subscribed to broadband phone service a few months ago, thinking "$20 a month for unlimited local and long distance calling sounds too good to be true". My main concern was the call quality, since I tried VoIP a few years ago and found it too choppy and cumbersome to bother with. Boy was I pleasantly surprised! Within the first week of using Packet8 internet phone service, I called the phone company and had my land line telephone disconnected. My internet phone acted and sounded just like my old "ma bell" service, and I could make all the long distance calls I wanted (any time I wanted) for no additional charge! My first months minutes totaled over 2000, and I still only paid around $23 ($19.95 + taxes and fees).

Broadband phone service has changed my life. I call long distance friends and family nearly every day now, and talk as long as I want to. I no longer worry about long distance charges or cell phone minutes, and actually saved more money by reducing my cell rate plan down to the bare minimum. I no longer have to plan my long distance calls around "nights and weekends", and Ive become much closer to my family because we talk more. As an added bonus, I can use the conference calling feature and talk to two people at once! Thanks to my VoIP service, everyone I call saves money. When someone wants to talk to me, they call and let my phone ring once. The free caller-id tells me who called and I call back using my "unlimited long distance". A good friend recently told me that her long distance bill is now under $20 a month thanks to my internet phone.

Internet phone service isnt for everyone, but if you make frequent long distance calls it will pay for itself immediately. VoIP is saving me around $45 a month (over $500 a year!). As an added benefit, you can spend so much time talking to far off loved ones that it feels like they live next door!

2005 Debbie Jacobsen, all rights reserved.

Debbie Jacobsen is an information technology professional and author of SaveOnPhoneService.com an informative website about Broadband Phone Service. If you are interested in learning more about the benefits and features of VoIP, please visit: http://www.saveonphoneservice.com