Am I required to have Long Distance Provider?
 

Does any one know if you must have a long Distance Provider? I want to use a Sam's club purchased phone card and not have to pay a monthly fee to a Long Distance provider every month.



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You're not required to have a long distance provider. IMO a better option is to sign-up for the AT&T / Delta promotion, specify you want the plan with no monthly fee or minimum (each call has a 35 cent connection fee), & get your 5,000 bonus miles while continuing to use your calling card. My miles have hit every month and I don't even receive a bill, not even any taxes for the miles.

You don't have to have a LD provider, but then your phone company can charge you about the highest rate allowed by law if you happen to make a call. The previous poster was correct, AT&T does have at least 2 different rates with no monthly fee. I know Verizon also has 1 or 2 plans with no fee.

Jeff

I have no LD provider and make US calls using 10-10-811 for 5 cents/minute or international with 10-10-220. No signup, no fees, no separate billings -- they just add it to your local phone company bill. You can probably go cheaper with a card but I'm not a big phone yakker, so the 10-10 numbers work well enough for me.

I checked into this in my area (metro D.C.) several years ago. My local phone company told me that I didn't need a long distance carrier, but (a) they would impose a $1.95 per month charge for not having a long distance carrier (!) and (b) if anyone actually direct dialed long distance from my phone, as previous posters have indicated, I would be subjected to the prevailing market rate, regardless of how unreasonable. So I flip frequently from one carrier to another. I just collected the last of my 40K Northwest/Sprint miles, and immediately switched to Northwest/MCI for 10K more.