For Long Distance: Dial `C' for Choices

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 29, 1999 | by Eli Lehrer

MCI World-Com: www.mci.com or (800) 444-3333. The One Plan offers 10-cent evenings, 25-cent weekdays and 5-cent Sundays. If you ask, however, MCI also will give you Saturday calls for 5 cents. Be careful, however, because MCI's standard credit-card call rates often are very high. For light users this may be the best savings plan because it has no monthly fee if you spend $5.

Sprint: www.sprint.com or (800) 877-4646. If you spend at least $30 a month and make a significant number of week-day calls, Spring Sense anytime might be the best plan. Given that AT&T and MCI both offer some form of 5-cent weekend calls, Sprint's $25 a month for unlimited weekend calls is only worthwhile for the heaviest users.

Internet-based Biling: Billing via the Internet saves money for phone companies that don't have to maintain processing operations and, by debiting checking accounts and credit cards, always get paid on time. Since the actual service is the same, these plans make the most sense for many users.

MCI: www.mciworldcom.com. Offers 5-cent Sundays and 9 cents a minute the rest of the time, with a $5 monthly minimum charge. Five-cent Saturdays also are available if, and only if, you ask for them.

AT&T also has 9 cent-per-minute rates. Unlike MCI, it offers customer service over the phone.

Cognigen: www.pec.net or www.ld.net: For conventional long-distance service, reseller Cognigen's Planet Earth Long Distance, with rates of 6.9 cents a minute and a free two-hour calling card, offers the best dial-1 rate Insight could find. Intrastate long-distance rates, how ever, tend to be higher than the other companies.

Internet Protocol Calling: Since the industry is only a little more than a year old and has dozens of tiny players, it's impossible to track down every IP-based provider. Two companies, TDI and Qwest, however, have begun to emerge as sizable players. TDI provides lower rates but isn't very easy to use. Quest works like any other dial-1 service but provides smaller savings.

TDI: www.net2phonedirect.com or (800) 989-4382. Offers 5-cents-a-minute rates with a 99-cent monthly fee, the lowest overall price that insight could find. TDI's special rates only are available in major cities and some suburbs and require a complex dialing sequence. TDI requires prepayment, has a $25 minimum purchase and a 99-cent monthly fee. Getting the 5-cents-per-minute rate requires switching your dial-1 service to a not-so-great MCI plan that TDI resells. Overall, the best bargain from TDI may be its 13-cents-per-minute calling card with a 99-cent monthly fee. Even with a 65-cent pay-phone fee, this is the cheapest calling card we could find.

Qwest: www.qwest.com or (800) 860-2255. Also offers 5-cents per minute rates with a $14.95 monthly fee. Other plans provide rates of 9 or 13 cents per minute. The company bills all customers in six-second increments rather than rounding up to the nearest minute as most other companies do. As a result, the savings are a bit better than the rates suggest.