Long Distance Phone Plans?

[Guest Raucus Bacchus]

Hey everyone. I was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to long distance phone plans that are good. I was just wondering if anyone has any recommendations?

[Guest thesaug]

Hi there,

 

When I was at UWO, I had a plan with Sun Telecom (www.suntelecom.net) for 500 minutes a month for 20 bucks, and each additional minute was 7 cents. This was for any time, any day and valid for North America. This is for land lines only. Sun Telecom also has a plan using access numbers for cell phones. Thru that, you get a rate of 5 cents a minute.

 

My roomate was with a company called G3 Telecom, which uses a access number system. You dial the local access number and then your pin code and then your destination. You have to put a minimum of 20 dollars into the account, and you get rates of 4 cents a minutes within Canada and 5 cents to the U.S. .

 

thesaug

[Guest avisee]

My parents use London Telecom, which has a $20 plan with a certain number of free evening minutes (I can't remember how many - it's enough for a chatty mother, although it was maxed out when my brother got a long-distance girlfriend and chatted overnight with her on a regular basis) and reverse calling, which is good because you can let other people call you for free. The plan requires that you dial a local number and then call through to your long distance destination, which allows you to call when you're away from home, and to give the number out to friends if you like. You may be able to pay more per month to get more minutes, although I'm sure of the specifics.

 

I've also used phone cards, which may be similar to G3 Telecom mentioned above by thesaug. You can get these everywhere - WalMart, 7-Eleven, etc etc, for values between $5 and $20 I think. Same deal, you have to call a local or 1-800 number, enter a 10-digit password, and then dial the destination number, but you pay about 4.3 or 4.5 cents per minute (day or night), so it may be worth it. The only caveat is that if there is no local number for your region, then you have to call the 1-800 number and pay an extra 5 cents per minute. However, I believe most of the cards I've seen have Kingston numbers to call, so this wouldn't apply there. Also, if you tend to make longer calls to certain people, you can alternatively buy phone cards for long calls, which have a connection fee of $1-$2, and then a per-minute rate of 1.5 or 2 cents - which works out if you talk for more than 20 minutes. And the bonus is that you can call from home, or from school between classes, or from the hospital, or even if you're in another town. I used phone cards when I was out of town for a month, and they weren't too annoying, but it may not be worth the inconvenience if you have to use them all the time.

[Guest thesaug]

Just to add to my previous message, Sprint has a deal where if you buy the local land line service through them, you can get a $20/month plan for unlimited calling within North American any time of the day. As you can see, I am avid phone user so I know a few things here and there...hahah

[Guest Elaine I]

I have Distributel. They offer unlimited talk within Ontario for $20 per month (any time of day, any day of the week). You have to dial a local phone number prior to dialing the long distance number. The added advantage is that you can use the service on your home and cell phones for the same $20 per month. (There are also national plans, but I don't know the details about those ones.)

 

Elaine

[Guest Steve U of T]

Sadly, the Labatt Blueline is going out of service at the end of October :-( That let you make free long distance calls to certain cities in Ontario, although the signal quality was horrible. Also, you had to listen to a beer ad before your call went through. I tried it once and decided I'd rather pay for my long distance calls.

[Guest blinknoodle]

Steve,

 

Is the Blueline going down again?

I thought it had stopped last year - and if you still wanted it then you had to pay a $20 annual fee for "Call Zone" through OnlineTel.

I hope the Call Zone isn't going out of service! Although the reception is not stellar, it is great for me!!

 

Cheers,

-bn

[Guest Oz10]

London Telecome $20 flat rate. Unlimited after 6pm to anywhere in Canada. 5 cents per minute during the day. Dial access number but well worth the savings.

[Guest Steve U of T]

Hmm. It looks as if I'm a bit out of date. I remember using Blue Line once a couple of years ago, and decided to look it up just now. I found their website saying that it was going out of service October 31, although no year is mentioned. Upon closer examination, that website is a year old.

 

Anyways, if you make lots of long distance calls, it seems $20/month is pretty standard. If you plan to make fewers calls, Yak and other similar companies give pretty good rates by the minute (5 cents or perhaps less), and I think you don't have to sign up for some of them. You dial a prefix followed immediately by the number you're calling, so you don't have to sit through any messages giving instructions.

[Guest Jixe]

As blinknoodle already mentioned, the "Call Zone" has been gold for many students all over Ontario.

 

As well, take a look at phone cards offered at your local Indian grocery store. They are reliable and super cheap ($5 cards can be had for $4 at almost all of these stores - making for an even better bargain).

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

Is Distributel still up and running? The reason I ask, I tried to go to their site to see if they had any national plans, and although they do seem to have a website, nothing seems to appear on it except for an orange background:

 

www.distributel.com/bas-en.htm

 

If I'm barking up the wrong tree, I'd like to be able to find the right one.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest westerngirl2004]

Kirsteen,

Try www.distributel.com/distr...com-en.htm instead.

Cheers,

westerngirl

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi there,

 

Thanks for the webpage.

 

FYI, I just gave Distributel a shout and, unfortunately, they only offer plans within Ontario and Quebec. The said that the best they can do in the other provinces is a calling card.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest Raucus Bacchus]

Wow, this innocent little thread has certainly spun off a pile of good info!

 

Thanks everyone. I will likely be doing distributel.

 

Another goody, for those that have techy friends with a computer and a mic on the other end, is skype.com.

 

It has been set up by the guys that initiated kazaa (I hear anyhow), and it offers completely free long distance any time....as long as you talk into your computer. I think that that is a great deal.

 

Again, it is free when you talk computer to computer, but there is some nodal fee for computer to phone conversations.

 

Hope that is as helpful to some as all the feedback on this thread has been to me.

 

Cheers!

R

[Guest Ian Wong]

Floating to the top...

 

Ian