Ever since 2006, the FCC has made what it calls *”Nomadic VoIP Carriers”, pay the FCC state to state Universal Service Fund fees. The FCC set an assumed state to state usage rate of 64.9%, which meant that if a internet phone service providers charged their customer $20.00 for monthly service, they would have to pay the feds the USF fee on an assumed state to state usage of $12.98. Over the last few years, the states have been trying to get those same nomadic VoIP companies to pay into their individual USF accounts based on the assumed instate usage of 35.1%, but the VoIP companies have been fighting them in court. But, as of November 5, 2010, the FCC is now allowing the states to collect that money going forward.

*Companies like Vonage are considered “Nomadic” because their customers could be anywhere, unlike regular landline customers.

I have recently come across a great way to save money on making phone calls. It is called Lingo Hello America Unlimited. This is an internet telephone service that allows me to make unlimited phone calls to anywhere in the US or Canada for less than twenty bucks a month. Even better is that I can use Lingo as my home phone service so I can get rid of my land line phone service altogether.

The biggest hassle with an internet phone service has always been that they weren’t that practical as a home phone service because they were a hassle to use for local calling. This was especially true when you had to get a new phone number. This isn’t an issue with Lingo and you can actually use them as your local phone service. They allow you to keep your phone number and they include local 911 calling.

Of course Hello America Unlimited comes with all of the features that you would expect from your home phone service. Caller id, call waiting, call forwarding they are all there. Combined with unlimited calls anywhere in the country and choosing Lingo is really a no brainer.

Business owners can save a lot of money if they are willing to go over their monthly local, long distance and internet bills, and do a little online comparison shopping. Some businesses spend too much on telephone service when they don’t need to, and if their telephone service and internet service are paid automatically by debit card, credit card or automatic check withdrawal, they may never even look at their bills. There’s a reason that telecom type companies want you to pay via automatic debit, credit or ACH, and that is because as long as you don’t see the bill, you don’t know what you’re spending. And that can end up getting a business into trouble.

The first bill that you should look at is your local phone service provider’s bill. How many lines do you have coming into the office, and do you need them all? Once you’ve counted your local lines, look at the phone bill and check which features each telephone line has, and then decide if they are are worth what you’re being charged for them. Business telephone lines, with local service only, can cost up to $45 for each local phone line each and every month with some providers, and if you’ve got a bunch of them, they can really cost you a lot of money.

Once you’ve broken down the local phone service bill, look at your long distance bill and see if your long distance carrier is providing you with a good deal on long distance service, or whether they are an expensive long distance carrier . Also, check the long distance bill to see if there are any calls outside the US or Canada. Different long distance providers charge different fees for domestic and international calls, so a $1.98 per minute call to Afghanistan with SBC may only cost $0.47 per minute with a discount company like TCI or Powernet Global.

Now that you can see what you are being charged for the local landlines and for the long distance calls, look at the rest of the taxes and fees on the bill. In most of the United States, the taxes and fees on landline phone service are %25 to %30 of the total bill. So, if your telephone bill was $100 for 2 or 3 local business lines, and $50 for domestic and international long distance calls, there might be an additional $40 to $50 in taxes and fees, for a total bill of around $200. Now let’s check out some internet phone companies and see about lowering your business’s telecom costs.

Broadband phone service requires a fast internet connection to work, so there is going to be an additional charge for having high speed internet service coming into your office. If you don’t have high speed internet service, you can get it from your local cable company for around $60 per month for 4 to 12 MB of service. That much bandwidth can run a lot of phones and a lot of computer apps, especially when you consider a T1 line has 23 channels, and that’s only 1.5MB of bandwidth. In my office, I run 2 internet phones and 3 computers, plus pipe in Pandora for office music, all with an 8MB plan from Charter. (It’s in my house, so I only pay $29.95 per month.)

Broadband telephone calling plans themselves are cheap, coming in at between $19.95 and $79.95 per month, depending on who you go with. Two of the internet phone companies offering cheap broadband calling plans are Lingo and Phonepower. Lingo offers unlimited calling to the US, Canada, and 45 other countries for $21.95 per month, while Phonepower offers unlimited calling on 2 lines in the US and Canada for $19.95 per month. Both broadband calling plans come with a ton of free features like 3-way calling, voice mail and others, that would cost a lot extra from a landline telephone carrier. and what’s really neat is that the taxes and fees on VoIP lines are cheaper than the PIC-C fees land-line carriers charge per business line.

If we do the math between landline telephone service and broadband telephone service, broadband telephone service wins in most cases. You can get 3-4 broadband telephone lines from Phonepower for around $45 per month, including tax. Add to that the $60 for high speed internet service, and the whole bill comes to around $105 instead of the $200 that landline service would cost you. And, if you figure in the fact that most businesses already have high speed internet service, the savings increase to around $155, instead of $95, per month. Any way that you look at it, broadband telephone service in this case is going to save you $1100 to $1900 per year over what you would pay for 2 or 3 landlines plus long distance service, plus taxes and fees.

For more information on saving your business money, visit calling-plans.com and use their home phone service, broadband telephone service, and wireless telephone rate calculators to compare cheap long distance phone service. I know that my small business can’t afford to give away $1500+ per year to the telecom companies; Can Yours?

Phonepower is an internet phone service provider offering business and residential phone service in the United States and Canada. Their unlimited local and long distance calling plan, for residential and small business users, offers a ton of features that would cost you a lot of money with a landline phone company, for less than $20 per month. For under $20 per month you get unlimited calling to the US and Canada, caller id, call waiting, 3-way calling, click2call, a find-me-follow-me service, block call list and a soft-phone that you can download and load on your PC that allows free PC to phone calling while traveling. Phonepower internet phone service offers a total of 45 call features that most landline phone companies charge extra for, including a free cloned second line, so that 2 people can be making and receiving telephone calls at the same time. So, if you have high speed internet service, and want to save money on your phone service, take a long hard look at all the cool features that Phonepower has to offer.