VOIP Phone

VOIP phone is a digital phone service that allows you to make telephone calls over your home's high speed internet access line. This could be a cable internet service or a digital internet line from your phone company. The voice over internet is a very popular service often packaged with internet and sometimes television cable bundles. Since you need high speed internet service to use a voip telephone service, it makes sense for phone and cable companies to offer these services as a bundle. When they add the option of digital tv they offer what is called a triple play bundle, where 3 related home entertainment services are sold from one company on the same bill.

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Toll Free Service

Toll Free Service can be a good value for business as well as personal use. Having a toll free number can allow a business to appear more professional as well as allow customers to call from long distance for free. While long distance charges aren't as significant as they used to be many potential customers still have to pay long distance charges. Having a toll free or 1-800 number is a convenience.

Toll free numbers also come in 877,866,888 and other exchanges in addition to the 800 toll free numbers. Businesses can use toll free numbers for national sales cmapiagns, for receiving orders, and call center order fulfillment.

Why would an individual person or family use a toll free number? A lot of families started using toll free numbers so their children could call them for free at any time. These include families who want their college children to call home without racking up their own long distance charges. The parents can control and pay for the costs this way. Toll free numbers are also good in emegrencies when a child does not have a cell phone or funds to pay for a pay phone call. A per minute charge and low monthly fee for toll free service can provide considerable savings over collect calls.

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Tampa Bay VOIP Long Distance

When it comes to long distance savings, most customers are looking for the best long distance phone rates in general or for calling a specific international destination. So why is this post about Tampa Bay long distance calling and Tampa Bay VOIP long distance plans specifically?

A lot of potentional customers have been searching for and asking me about discount phone service in certain geographical areas. Do I recommend a specific long distance phone provider or long distance service type in Tampa Bay, for example?

That is a good question. There ARE different phone service providers and service types depending on your location. Tampa Bay may have more long distance providers than Boise, for example. Maybe there is more or less competition from resellers. In some areas major providers like AT&T provide exceptional value, especially in triple play packages. They also face competition on basic landline home phone services.

For long distance in Tampa Bay, I would be willing to bet a Tampa Bay voip provider might offer the best deal. With the rise of companies like Vonage, the local providers like AT&T ( with their uVerse) and Verizon have gone the old "if you can't beat them, join them" route and are pushing their own digital phone services. These voip calling plans often provide better value than old 1 plus long distance, in Tampa Bay and elsewhere.

So what is the best long distance provider in Tampa Bay? What I recommend is using a tool like the Whitefence triple play quote tool ( see banner below) and entering your local information for a service quote. Another option is just going directly to a VOIP provider like the one at the bottom of this post. Either way you will find a good deal for long distance in Tampa bay or anywhere.

Discount Long Distance

Remember all those 10-10 long distance companies? You don't? Well, back in the late 90s there were many companies like 10-10-320 that ran television commercials for their discount long distance services. AT&T fought back...with Carrot Top.

These 10-10 numbers allowed a caller to dial ( often from pay phones, remember those?) the number and then pay only 10 cents per minute for long distance calls. I remember names like the "dime line" and these companies places ads and cards everywhere. Back then AT&T and MCI charged outrageous rates like 20-30 cents a minute to call someone across the state.

The "problem" with these dime a minute services was that eventually someone would come out with the 5 cent call, then the 4 cent, and 3 cent. Big companies lowered their rates to 7 cents per minute. And other competing services took over ( VOIP, wireless,etc). This was before EVERYONE had a cell phone. A lot of young adults had pagers. When they received a page they would call the number back from home or a pay phone.

Around 2000 many long distance companies came to be- offering 3-4 cpm without dialing a code every time you made a call. For a few years it was very easy to get someone to replace their AT&T plan with a <5 cents plan with no monthly fees.

While the heyday of this service is long gone ( people have cell phones, VOIP, Instant messaging, text, facebook now), there are still quite a few discount long distance companies with very good rates of 2-3 cents per minute on long distance calls.

Broadband Phone

Broadband Phone is growing in popularity and will continue to do so in our opinion. By Broadband Phone we mean phone service that uses your high speed internet connection. The most well known example is Vonage. There are MANY companies like Vonage with very similar offerings and deals. Even most local phone and cable companies now offer something like this and many are pushing the switch. For example, I was an AT&T land line customer but their reps talked me into switching to Uverse digital phone.

Carriers who felt threatened by VOIP have made the smart move by embracing the service. Many cheap broadband companies ( Sunrocket anyone?) have gone out of business.

International Call Origination from Canada and Overseas

Most of our international calling clients were based in the United States and wanted to call Canada or other countries. However, many clients actually lived IN Canada and wanted to make calls that originated internationally. This could include Canadians who needed to call friends in the United States or Europe.

The solutions for this are not as plentiful, however there are a few internationally calling cards and services that get the job done. Recent VOIP services also cater to Canadian customers and those who want to be able to choose where their calls originate.

Dialaround Long Distance Phone Service

Dialaround is a long distance phone service that allows the subscriber to save money on phone calls without changing providers. You signup for a service that gives you a toll free access code and allows you to "dial around" and use that provider for a specific phone call.

This service was particularly popular for international calls, where phone company rates where very high. We signed up a lot of customers who had origins in Asia and Eastern Europe especially. This works similar to the international calling card. However, the dial around providers allowed a customer to register phone numbers they would call from, with no need to use a card.