subject: Using Home Phone Service Smartly To Save Money And Get Features [print this page] The next time someone says that home phone service is obsolete, call their bluff. In fact home phone is getting more useful by the day and better too. Voice quality and data transfer rates are years ahead of the competing mobile services and is seldom adversely affected by weather and vagaries of nature. Another notable feature is they dont need air bandwidth allocation which is available only in limited quantities. Still a better reason why home phone is a healthier proposition is they dont pose health hazards like cell phones do. So if you are going to use phones extensively, like most of us do these days, make it a point to use home phones over mobiles.
Since bandwidth is not an issue with home phones, and mobile service providers understand pay hefty fee to government for this privilege, they are priced more competitively than mobile services. And that is also the reason why home phone providers give plans that are charged flatly with unlimited calling facilities in the US, Canada and Puerto Rica, which mobile operators cannot even think about. Besides, home phones are flexible to interactivity. That means they can be put to better use when the used to deliver non-voice services like TV and internet. And that is the reason why satellite based TV service providers struggle so hard to compete with cable operators and telephone companies in spite of the fact that they are not required to maintain a vast network of cables and central offices.
It is normal to be within the service area of more than one home phone operators, and that is a distinct advantage you may not want to forego. More competitors mean madder rush to garner more customers, and to entice, phone companies also need to give more concession to consumers. So it is benefit after benefit for home phone users. But at the end of the day, the ultimate benefit that users will get will depend on the plans that they choose. Most plans that home phone companies give their customers are simple and easy to understand. There are plans and extras that you can add to the chosen plans for customers special requirements. Here are some plan types you will come across from service providers. For most part they are typical.
-Unlimited Local Calling that will let user call anywhere in the US, Canada and dependent territories. The charges are usually flat rate payable monthly.
-Unlimited Local Calling with fixed minutes of Long Distance Calling. They are advantageous for business purpose or for calling families and relative living outside the local calling area.
-Fixed Minutes International Calling to select countries for a flat monthly charge. The principal advantage of these types of international calling is that you dont have to remember individual country calling rates. Usage beyond the fixed minutes can be charged differently, so be careful when you use them.
Feature wise the home phone wins hands down. Three way conferencing is usually provided as a standard feature like caller ID, Call Back and so on and so forth. Cutting down home phone charges is easy if you can club it with internet and TV. Since TV and Internet is the main focus of the operators from which they hope to make money, little they will try raising extra revenue from home phone, and that by itself is good enough reason to order a home phone. The usual way to call these types of plans is bundle. By combining home phone with TV and Internet you can avail additional features like who-is-calling notification on TV, Voice mail on your computer and even more advanced features with Apps that enable handheld devices like iPAD, iPhone and Smartphone. In fact the sky is the limit when it comes to using home phones innovatively.
