Optimizing my monthly communications spending...
 

I'm sure some of you here have gone through this dilemma. Look at your cell, cable/satellite, landline, and Internet bills. A lot of us spend a ton of money on these things, and now I'm starting to ask myself whether or not it's worth it. I think my New Year's Resolution will be to optimize my spending in these areas, even though the conversion process might be painful.

Between Sprint PCS, cable, cable modem, and basic dial-tone service at home, I pay about $250/month. $120 for wireless, $90 for cable/Internet, and $40 for home phone.

I actually think my wireless bill is close to optimized: that $120 is for 3 lines with near-unlimited minutes under a very old grandfathered plan from back when I worked for Sprint PCS when they launched. We use the phones a lot and enjoy the fact that minutes-of-use is never a concern for us.

The $90 cable bill always feels to me like a giant sucking sound. My needs are simple: some sort of decent Internet connection and basic TV. ESPN, ESPN2, Food Network, Discovery, History, and a few others. No movies or anything on-demand or high definition. We are close enough to a central office to consider DSL, but not if it means letting Ma Bell into my house. I know they own the local loop, but I don't actually want to deal with them because I know they do not have my interests in mind.

For local phone, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go VoIP but I know this is the most painful cutover process because the incumbent provider may attempt to sabotage the portability process (or simply delay it as long as legally possible). We've already had the "Do we even need a home phone" discussion and yes, we need some sort of cheap home phone.

So what do you suggest? Is there any money to be saved with Dish or DirectTV? Is there a broadband reseller I should consider? I think VoIP is a "go" but what are the common pitfalls? Does VoIP work better with cable or DSL or does it matter? With a good enough VoIP service that includes LD, I might be willing to consider a cheaper wireless plan as long as the "minute management" I'd have to do wasn't too painful.

If I could just get the $250 down to $200 I'd be happy. Six hundred bucks a year...seems like a reachable (and meaningful) goal, right?

It would help if you said where you live.

SBC, for example, has some great deals on DSL. Do you have a clear line of sight to the SSW?... DirecTV has some great deals on satellite. VoIP... yada, yada....

Agreed, you location is important to know. I just set my sister up with Cavalier voice and DSL, $25/month for basic local service, $25 for DSL, $20 for unlimited toll + LD, plus taxes and fees. Benchmarked her DSL, got a reading of 3800kbs down, 807kbs up, faster than my Comcast HSI.

Jeff

Since Cingular bought AT&T, all these customers can call each other without wasting minutes. Further, they have specials to add a line for $10/month so you may be able to bring your bill down to around $80 including taxes and fees.

Location is Kansas City area - yes, I have a clear sight line to the SSW. The guy who owned the house before me actually had Dish and said he had no problems with the signal.

Would SBC require me to have one of their voice lines in order to get DSL?

Broadbandreports.com isn't showing any interesting alternatives. Just a bunch of higher-cost providers and stuff like satellite broadband ($$$$).

Yes...and you also have to have a POTS (voice) line in order to use DirecTV (the converter box must remain connected to a phone line for authorization and billing).

Upside, the DSL is only $26.95 a month if you have voice (which would run $20ish/mo) and DirecTV can be had for around $50/month. So you'd have voice, DSL and satellite TV for around what you spend on the cable bill alone now.

BTW we're in STL and have had zero problems with SBC.

Sprint has the same feature. Everybody I know uses Sprint, and the feature comes in quite handy.

I could do one of two things: (a) buy a VoIP plan that is truly unlimited with free nationwide LD. A simple example is the $24.99 Vonage plan. Then, drop my wireless plan down to a restricted-minute plan with the three handsets for a little under $100 a month. (b) Keep my wireless plan as is and buy the most barebones VoIP plan possible - the simple example being Vonage's $14.99 deal.

Option (b) would save me $10/month vs. my current scenario. Option (a) would save me another $10 beyond that but would require a behavior change - that is, actually paying attention to wireless minutes and placing calls from the home phone whenever possible.

Honestly, the process of calling providers and talking to people who will inevitably put me on hold, try to sell me something I don't need, mess up my order, put me on hold again, create billing problems for months into the future, and then deliver me a product that doesn't work as promised is my biggest fear with executing these changes.

That's why it's a New Year's Resolution: there will be pain involved, but if I can justify it as getting paid $600/yr to endure that pain I might be able to swallow it.

Is your $20/month for voice before or after taxes/fees? What about the $27 for DSL? Are we talking $47/month or is it more like $70+ after taxes? My taxes and fees from Birch Telecom are about 65%! :mad:

One last question: has anyone here had any success calling Time Warner and asking them to match SBC's DSL prices? Or will they say "Go ahead, we dare you to switch."

The best of all worlds would be if TW matched SBC DSL - at least for a few months, at which time I could reevaluate. I'd dump Birch in favor of VoIP, and maybe tweak my PCS plan a bit to generate $50/month in savings.

The sticking point with DSL is going to be the voice line. I know SBC won't give me a $20 all-in voice line and low-30's all-in DSL.

Hard to figure exactly what the taxes would be on only one line since I have two, but if I'm reading the e-bill correctly here's what I'm paying:

Basic local service $11.75
Caller ID name & number $9.65
Unlisted number $2.31
Federal subscriber line charge $10.42 (I think this is 2x $5.21)
Garbage/federal/state/local taxes $11.46

So it looks like a stripped down line should run:
Basic local service $11.75
Federal SL charge $5.21
Taxes ~$6 - $7

Total $23-24

There are no taxes assessed on the DSL fee. (YET!)

Taxes and fees over one hundred percent.

Yikes.

Can you get Metered Rate for your local landline phone service? I did this when I got my cell phone a couple of years ago.

Basically, you get charged per call for all local calls. They include around $5 worth of calls. The break even point is something like 10-20 calls. If you make more than 10-20 calls a month, then you should get the unlimited local plan. If you make less, then get Metered Rate (also known as Measured Rate)

Here's what I'm paying:

1-02 Measured Rate Residence Svc 5.70
1-03 Caller ID Complete Blocking .00
1-04 Your Listing Is Not Published .28
Total Monthly Service 5.98

Taxes and Fees are $6.00, so I'm paying $12 a month for local phone service. As you'll note, I completely stripped out any other service that might cost me anything except for unlisted number.

I hardly ever use my landline nowadays. I use my cellphone for just about everything, including long distance.

While not in Kansas City, one tatic that has worked for me is to play the cable company off DSL/Satellite and vice versa. Basically I call the cable company tell them I want to cancel (if yours is like mine), they'll offer just about anything to keep you from switching. I typically get between 30-50% off my bill for 6 months, at which time I repeat the process. I've done this three times now, and number 4 will be happening shortly.

Don't stiff arm them, just say that you want to cancel because DSL/Sat. is sooooo cheap. You'd hate to leave because you love company XYZ, but these prices. Gee, if you could just match them ..........

As always, look at what the best offer you can get from other companies is so you know before you call exactly what it would cost. Don't worry if it's an introductory rate being offered, it's just a bargaining chip.

It's a pain to call back every 6 months, but 5 minutes of work pays well.

Not sure what the market is like in KC, but here is another strategy that I had success with when I lived in an area with no competition. Find out what the cable company is offering new customers. Then call to complain, "Why am I paying 70, when the newbies are paying 35?!?" The success rate was only about 50%, but you have to take what you can get in that situation.

My basic SBC landline in Dallas is 24/mo inc. taxes. DSL is 26.95 + 1.75 (new SBC rip-off fee). It's 1500 down & 384 up and is for a 1 yr contract. I have renewed it twice at that rate. I have their basic, free LD package that I do not use. I use my cell for LD or OneSuite.com

SBC also has a bundle if you buy DSL, POTS and Cingular -- prices vary by zip code. You can also add Dish to it, but IMHO it's not as good as DirecTV (OT there!). I do not use it.

DirecTV needs a phone line only to activate, but after that only if you want to order PPV the cheapest way. There are all sorts of forums on this issue elsewhere. Mine is 40.15/mo for Total Choice. It will be another $12 inc. tax once my free 6 months of their HD channel package expires next March. I get my HD locals via antenna in the attic. There are lots of deals for it at their site now.

Inc. my single ATTWS cell and my wife's Cingular, our total monthly outlay is 194. I expect to drop it by 10-20 once her Cingular contract is up in the summer.

Hope that gives some futher ideas.

(Painful) Step 1: 22 minutes on the phone, $240 credit
 

Called Time Warner and explaind the DSL-Dish combo offer. They countered with a $20 credit for each of the next 12 months. The downside was that it took 22 minutes and 3 different people to reach that point. Hey: I knew this wouldn't be easy...gotta stay calm... :) I did not argue for more credits - by the time I got to somebody who could help me I just wanted off the phone. I'm happy with the $240. I figure they know I don't really want to go back to Ma Bell, so I don't think they were going to up the ante much beyond that number.

This pretty much locks me into the cable-VoIP mode for at least the next year. Next up is picking a VoIP provider...