Phone

Phone

Even though a growing number of people are replacing their home telephones or land lines with their cellular phones, the vast majority of us still have residential phone service. When looking for a telephone service provider, it's wise to shop around for cheaper rates, better packages, more services and whatever else you may need to fit your own personal calling needs.

Telephone Services

Most telephone service providers will offer basic phone packages as well as add-on features that let you customize your service. Depending on your calling needs, you may find adding on services rather than buying an all-inclusive package to be more desirable.

Voice Mail – Voice mail takes the place of your answering machine and can be accessed from your home phone as well as any other phone. Voice mail service may also offer multiple mailboxes that multiple people in a household can access with their own personal passwords. This service is useful for families with older children and roommates sharing an apartment or a house.

Call Waiting – Call waiting may be one of the most familiar telephone services. This feature signals an incoming call with a beep while you are already talking on the line. Although some find this annoying, most people are glad that they never have to miss a call.

Call Forwarding – Call forwarding lets you direct your incoming phone calls to a different phone number. Busy call forwarding is a feature that directs your incoming calls to a different number if your line is busy. Another variation of this is delayed call forwarding, which directs your phone calls to a different number once your phone rings a preset number of times. Some phone service providers also let you dial in from a phone other than your home phone to redirect your calls and allow you to select which calls you would like to forward and which calls you do not.

Call Return – This feature allows you to call back the number of someone who has called you.

Repeat Dialing – If you are trying to reach a party whose line is busy, this service will automatically redial the number for you until it can get through. Usually, a specialized ring sounds to let you know when your call begins to go through.

Speed Dialing – Speed dialing does just what its name implies and can be used as a shortcut for frequently called numbers.

Call Screening – If you know of certain numbers you do not want calling your phone, this feature will block calls from these numbers for you.

Caller ID – Another very popular service, caller ID, allows you to see the number of the person who's calling before you pick up the phone. In addition, call waiting can be integrated with your caller ID, usually for an extra fee, to let you know the number of the person calling while you are on another call. Caller ID Blocking can also be added to block your number from another person's caller ID.

Three-Way Calling – This feature allows you to conduct conference calls with more than one person at the same time.

Long Distance – Long distance service varies from carrier to carrier. Packages may be based on the amount of minutes you use for long distance, the area of the country you are calling, international calling or a combination of all of the above.

While this is not an exhaustive list of features available, these are the most popular phone services out there, and your telephone service provider should offer all of them in some form. Packages may also be offered and are designed to give you a discount on multiple services.

You may be subject to a credit check before you can get telephone service. If you owe a certain telephone provider money or have poor credit, you may be able to find a prepaid phone service. These services can be useful as a last resort, but usually cost much more than regular phone service
 
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