Is Skype your cheapest home phone option?

Al writes in: I've been trying to figure out whether it's worth it to switch my home phone service to Skype or Vonage or Magic Jack or one of those other services. Do you save pennies or dollars by switching?

Skype offers unlimited long distance calling for most of North America for $7.99 a month. To receive calls, you'll as well need a Skype phone number, which costs $6 per month. You as well will have to buy a phone adapter or use your computer for calls. You'll as well need high speed internet, clearly.

The entire U.S.

Vonage offers unlimited long distance calling for the entire U.S. for $24.99 a month, however there a lot of different discounted deals floating around out there that lowers the price a bit. You'll as well need high speed internet.

MagicJack offers unlimited long distance calling for the entire U.S. for $40 for the first year and $20 for each additional year. You'll as well need high speed internet, clearly.

What about ordinary phone service?

What about ordinary phone service? You're going to find a huge variety in available plans depending on who your local provider is. The local provider in our area provides unlimited free calling to anywhere in the U.S. for $46 a month. There's as well a more basic package for around $22 a month that offers free local calls, free incoming calls, and nationwide long distance for $0.10 a minute.

So, if you have high speed internet by all means, you'll save money using any of the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) providers. How much money you save depends on what phone offers are available in your area, however this is decidedly in the "save dollars, not cents" area.

Now, if you're only going to get high speed internet because you intend to use it partly for the phone service, it depends on how much the internet service to tell the truth is and how much you intend to utilize it for other things. Increasing your internet speed beyond a typical low-end DSL or cable connection won't make a whole lot of impact on how you surf the web. It in the main only shows up with things like streaming video or online games like World of Warcraft and it will undoubtedly improve your call quality with VoIP services like these.

Will you get additional value out of high-speed internet beyond just Skype or Vonage or MagicJack? If the answer to that question is yes, at that time switching to VoIP will probably save you some money. If you're unsure, straightway the switch probably isn't worth it because of the extra internet costs.