When I lived back in the city I got a DSL connection as soon as it became available. Suddenly I could send and receive large files in minutes instead of almost an hour for some files. Internet telephony was a novelty. A few years ago, I moved to a rural area. Since I work at home and have to send huge files to my customers, I needed a high speed connection. The only option was a cable internet connection. Wow, it was a lot faster than DSL. But I had a plain old telephone service. My wife and daughter maintained their connections with their friends back home on the phone. The first phone bill included almost $200 in long distance charges…and that was with a "special" rate. The next month was even more. You may be wondering why we didn’t use our cell phones. We live far enough from cell towers that we could only get a consistent signal (only 2 bars) if we went down to the end of the driveway, over by the mailbox…and it was winter. I became a Vonage subscriber. Long distance charges $0.

If your office has a broadband connection and make out of town calls, you’re probably ready. All the VOIP services offer unlimited local and long distance calls throughout North America for less than your local-only phone service. They all have inexpensive international call rates. Most offer inexpensive toll-free phone numbers. And almost all VOIP suppliers are much less expensive than the "Phone Company". If you could eliminate your long distance phone charges, how much would you save?

There are some people who complain about the quality of VOIP calls. In my experience, the poorest quality is better than the quality of most cell phone calls. Most of the time, no one will even know that you are saving money by talking to them on VOIP. Sure, once in a while you’ll have to apologize and make the call again, but you have to do that from time to time even with a plain old telephone service. The difference is that it won’t cost you any more to make that second call with VOIP.

You won’t have to buy new phones and you won’t have to do without your favorite calling features either. They all work with a VOIP connection. Voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, and even call forwarding are all standard features. If you are on the road using high speed internet connections at hotels to do your business, you can take your VOIP device with you and make and receive calls where ever you go. One of the coolest features, available from many VOIP services, is virtual phone numbers. If you work with customers in several cities around the country, you can get a phone number in their area for just a couple of dollars a month. That means your customers can call you just like you were in an office down the street.

VOIP isn’t just a novelty any more, it’s a proven way to save substantial money on phone expense for your home, home office or business. The big companies use it and millions of us little folks are saving with VOIP.

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