Re: Long distance phone service

["Jen...tel" <poleclimber@xxxxxxxxx>]

What you need to do is contact your local sales office and ask for a
representative to sit and go over your phone package. (be prepared to
examine a years worth of useage) Look carefully at your usage and
features.  If you have a back line that only the employees use, is it
really necessary to have 20 features when all you need is caller-id, if
that?  How many lines have conference, ring-back, hunting, or for that
matter, long distance?  If you don't need a feature, have the rep work
through each line or group of lines to tailor the features to match
what you use.  If your long distance is predictable from specific
regions, you may be better getting an unlimited plan for those regions
and paying the excess if it's out of the region instead of a much
higher rate and never call out of the area enough to hit the extra
cost.  Think about eliminating or combining lines if you can do duel
roles on a single line.  let's say you have DSL, many businesses
maintain voice lines and a separate voice line for DSL.  If you shift
DSL to a seldom use voice line, you save there.  Many local phone
companies (Ma Bells) offer voip, but you should reserve those only for
the nonessential voice calls.  If you choose voip from the phone
company, they can package it into your regular service as a bundle,
saving you cost.  Look into packaged bundle cell phones from the same
company, you may be able to share services and cost instead of the
landlines being one bill, the cells another, data another, and so on.