Telecommunications has changed! Are you still paying for phone service at home? Read this!

[Steven Moyer]

If you live in the United States you now have a lot of options besides a home phone.  A lot of cable TV services are selling phone service but it's not the cheapest available.  By far the cheapest is Google Voice --- which is totally FREE for another year. 
They said they would start charging in 2012 but I just got notification they will be giving another year of FREE service.  Even if you already have a cell phone, a home phone, or another phone.  This is a good deal.  You'll get your own number, voice mail and a unique call forwarding feature which will ring up to three phones when someone calls your Google number.  In addition to that, they have an option where they will transcribe your voice mail and send it to your email address, if you wish, and the transcription is usually good enough so that you don't need to listen to the voice mail!

http://voice.nodes.org  for Google Voice  My number is  802-488-5065

Then there is Skype, which is free for calls between two people using Skype.  In addition to talking, you can chat ( text ) and do video and screen sharing.   I find Skype is by far the best communication option for my needs.  I use it a lot.  In fact, even though I have Google Voice ( which is free ) I am willing to pay $2.99 a month to make virtually unlimited calls on Skype to numbers in America ( U.S.A. and Canada ).   It's worth ten cents a day.   There are many add-ons for Skype including programs which will record your communications ( audio and video ).  

http://skype.nodes.org  My ID is stevenkentmoyer  ( lucked out --- got my full name! )

I also have a Tracfone for cell communications.  A friend gave it to me.  She bought it at a second-hand store for $5, I think.
It had over 1,000 service days on it but no minutes.  That's cool because Tracfone won't turn off your phone as long as you have at least one service day and one minute.  So I rarely use it but it has voice mail and I can call into the phone with Skype or Google voice to retrieve my voice mail messages, which I do about once a week.  If you want to reach me, try Skype or email.  It's a lot faster than voice mail ( unless it's Google voice mail, which is sent to my email ). 

To get cheap minutes go to the Tracfone site and sign up online for the monthly plan of 50 minutes for $10.  The phone I have has "double minutes" so I get 100 minutes for $10.  The minutes will last as long as you have service days remaining.  That's why you should buy a second-hand phone that has a lot of service days and no minutes.  ( they go really cheap. )  So $10 last me several months on the cell phone.  I simply tell people that I'll call them back when I get home.  Now you can set up both Google phone and Skype to forward to your cell phone, so you'll get the call on the cell phone and can talk for a minute or two.  Most of the time this is sufficient to set up a better time to talk longer.  It's not good to talk on the cell phone anyway.  Radiation, remember?

https://www.tracfone.com/direct/ValuePlans   ( My cell number is 508-847-3329 )

So basically for less than $5 a month I have three phone numbers, unlimited calling and voice mail transcription.
If you are paying more than that you may want to re-consider your options.

Blessings!

Steve Moyer


--
"Consume less and share more."

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   ~~Peace and Lღve ~~
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Think virtue.  Teach virtue.  Live virtue

Steve Moyer

http://stevemoyer.us 

http://facebook.com/metamind

http://nodes.net  ( NODES Network )

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