Re: OT: Telephone land line and DSL alternatives?

>     I have Cox for Internet, Phone and Cable.

>     Several months ago I was getting irritated with the high cost of
>     the land line phone portion of my bill. What I did was to get a
>     Google voice number, which provided me with free long distance and
>     voice mail (as well a many other excellent features - all for
>     free). I then dropped all the "bells & whistles" and long distance
>     service from my land line and simply have a basic line w/Caller
>     ID. The cost for this land line is $11.75 line fee + $5.95 for
>     caller ID. The rest is various taxes. Total land line = $28 /month.

>     If someone calls my land line directly (instead of my Google #), I
>     have an answering machine to handle that.
>     If you really want to get lean, drop your land line altogether and
>     have your Google voice number simply route to your calls to your
>     cell phone.

>     As far as fax service, there is absolutely no need to have a
>     dedicated fax line and machine these days. There are so many
>     online services available for so cheap that it doesn't pay to
>     "host" it yourself.  My brother receives hundreds of faxes each
>     month and he pays $2-3 per month flat rate.  To send a fax, he
>     simply sends an email to the hosting service and they fax it
>     appropriately (although the need for sending faxes is getting
>     exceedingly rare).

>     Hope this helps.
>     Peter

>     joe@actionline.com <mailto:joe@actionline.com> wrote:

>         Are there any alternatives to Qwest for land-line telephone
>         and DSL service?

>         Qwest has just raised their rates and I think some of the
>         charges are
>         unreasonable, particularly for voice mail and the portion of
>         the DSL
>         service that goes to M$ (which is the most irritating since I
>         don't use M$
>         for anything).

>         For the land-line phone service, I pay $37.99/month which
>         includes a
>         second land-line and voice-mail for one line. But then they
>         charge $6.20
>         for each of the two lines for "Federal Access Charge"
>         (probably can't do
>         anything about that).  But for voice mail on the second line,
>         they charge
>         an additional $7.95/month plus $3.95 for an extension mailbox.
>         That part
>         seems excessive to me. Surely there must be some other good
>         alternatives.

>         The broadband charges  show as $38.00 for Qwest Connect Platinum
>         plus $16.99 for Qwest Connect PLTNM w MSFT, less "bundle savings"
>         of $5.00/month and a promotional discount of $15.00/month.
>         So $54.99 - $20.00 = $34.99/month.

>         Any suggestions?

>         ---------------------------------------------------
>         PLUG-discuss mailing list -
>         PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>         <mailto:PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
>         To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>         http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss

>     ---------------------------------------------------
>     PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>     <mailto:PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
>     To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>     http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss