Do you use your phone like a … well, phone?
With the potential for “Google Voice” to come into Canada someday (hopefully sooner than later), and Dell Voice (as well as many of the other VOIP apps out there, like FRING, etc…), I wonder how many people are actually using voice plans.
I took a look at Dell’s plan for their long distance in non-ascribed areas, and it’s 2¢/minute. I know that sounds cheap, but it’s not the best long distance rate out there. Then I took a look at my own plan. I’m with Tbaytel, and their lowest voice plan option, which is $30 for 100 minutes. Mind you the lowest plan doesn’t give you the best $/min rate… but that’s still 30¢/min. Even at their top plan it’s just over 8¢/min. So we pay MORE for a minute than we would for long distance on a VOIP plan.
Now I could sit down and do the math of using VOIP for data and how much data we could consume for the same… okay, I’m a math guy, I’m going to do the math…
Personally I have 200 minutes a month plan — at 1MB / minute (from Dell Voice’s FAQ, which seems high to me, so we’ll use it) that would roughly 200MB of strictly data.
I have a 500MB plan for $25/month. Which works out to 5¢/MB (and if we use the fact that 1MB = 1 minute, it’s still CHEAPER than a voiceplan). So if I were to purchase just VOIP data, I’d be paying only $10/month for VOIP calling.
Well over what I’m paying now. But then again I’m not using all of my voice plan anyways.
So, of my 500MB plan a month I’m using a little over 300MB or so a month, so if I could buy JUST a data plan, it might work for me. I would lose out caller ID etc… and the fact that DELL VOICE doesn’t work in my area (I’d have a long distance number to call in).
But this doesn’t take into account that often I’m in my house or office or a location with WiFi, so I’d probably use less ‘data’ that I’d be paying for.
It’s an interesting proposition to go VOIP only. If I had a local number, and could buy a data only plan… I’d do it. Heck, I’d be saving money each month. Even if I upped my data plan and dropped all the voice options.
Telecoms, are you paying attention?
So I wanted to ask, are you using voice plans? If so, in what relation are you paying for it vs. your data plan?
