Well I will still have the iPhone... So, AT&T still around.
But, going away is DSL and local phone service. I have my home office at home, so I had 3 phone lines and DSL. The bill has been slowly creeping up (as I assume AT&T profits have been going up), it has just about reached $200/month.
AT&T just raised DSL rates $5/month. It is now $10 cheaper than cable modem. It used to be $25/month lower. Cable interent rates have not gone up in the last 5 years, but they finally increased the speed. So, I am going to pay the $10 premium for 2.5x the speed (6mbit DSL to 15Mbit cable).
I decided I no longer need fax at home. I am down to about 4-6 pages a month, and 4 of them are from one of my offices to the other that I am converting to email. I calculate each fax page is about $5 (cost of the phone line) not to mention machine, paper and toner, but I have not bought toner in a long time since I hardly use it. Everyone uses email now. 5 years ago it was probably 150+ pages a month.
I signed up for VOIP. I used viatalk since they could port my number. 2 year prepaid came out to $198 including all the taxes and fees ($178 before taxes and fees). This works out to 1/18 the old cost. They have a system where you can get 2 calls at the same time, sort of 2 phone lines with one number. You can be talking to one person, the phone can ring and someone else can answer and talk on the other phone to someone else at the same time. This more than meets my needs, I do not need 2 separate phone numbers.
It will be interesting to see how things go without a fax. I looked at fax to email services and such, but even the $5/month service is still expensive considering I get 1-2 faxes per month now.
This is just be the first step. I still will pay AT&T around $1200/month for all my locations/offices. I am probably stuck with the phone line for locations with credit card processing, but I can go down to just 1 line each spot. Even so, it would work out to about $600/month savings.
But, going away is DSL and local phone service. I have my home office at home, so I had 3 phone lines and DSL. The bill has been slowly creeping up (as I assume AT&T profits have been going up), it has just about reached $200/month.
AT&T just raised DSL rates $5/month. It is now $10 cheaper than cable modem. It used to be $25/month lower. Cable interent rates have not gone up in the last 5 years, but they finally increased the speed. So, I am going to pay the $10 premium for 2.5x the speed (6mbit DSL to 15Mbit cable).
I decided I no longer need fax at home. I am down to about 4-6 pages a month, and 4 of them are from one of my offices to the other that I am converting to email. I calculate each fax page is about $5 (cost of the phone line) not to mention machine, paper and toner, but I have not bought toner in a long time since I hardly use it. Everyone uses email now. 5 years ago it was probably 150+ pages a month.
I signed up for VOIP. I used viatalk since they could port my number. 2 year prepaid came out to $198 including all the taxes and fees ($178 before taxes and fees). This works out to 1/18 the old cost. They have a system where you can get 2 calls at the same time, sort of 2 phone lines with one number. You can be talking to one person, the phone can ring and someone else can answer and talk on the other phone to someone else at the same time. This more than meets my needs, I do not need 2 separate phone numbers.
It will be interesting to see how things go without a fax. I looked at fax to email services and such, but even the $5/month service is still expensive considering I get 1-2 faxes per month now.
This is just be the first step. I still will pay AT&T around $1200/month for all my locations/offices. I am probably stuck with the phone line for locations with credit card processing, but I can go down to just 1 line each spot. Even so, it would work out to about $600/month savings.
