Inexpensive telephone providers in NYC?

August 3, 2004 9:45 AM

Alternative telephone providers in the NYC area?: I need to find an economically viable solution to run 3 telephone land-lines and 1 fax line for a small business in Brooklyn. Our current provider is Verizon: we use >500 minutes a month, and pay about $350 (MI).

My concerns are that by latching onto an “illegitimate” company, I may leave our business open to 'slamming' and invoice padding. Does anyone know of a cheap, yet reputable service provider? Particularities: I'm not interested in VOip. Also, what about just installing a local plan, and using calling cards to make all long distance calls. Is that asinine?

This project has become the bane of my existence, as google yields such a quagmire of results, and this sort of admin work does not get me motivated. Thanks in advance...

posted by naxosaxur to Work & Money (10 answers total)

Vonage
posted by xammerboy at 10:37 AM on August 3, 2004

Vonage
posted by adampsyche at 11:05 AM on August 3, 2004

Can I ask why you are opposed to VOIP? Seems like something like Vonage would be the most cost effective solution in your situation.
posted by mhaw at 11:14 AM on August 3, 2004

I don't know how the price compares, but Working Asset recently started providing local service in the NYC area.

A portion of profits go to charities, at least that's what they tell us.
posted by o2b at 11:22 AM on August 3, 2004

Honestly, it's going to be hard to get what you're looking for using a "traditional" comm vendor. (Yes, I'm a reasonably-pleased Vonage user, but only after doing a lot of looking around into pricing, etc. It's not perfect, but a very low flat rate and a lot of flexibility definitely work out as the best answer for me, overall.)
posted by LairBob at 11:54 AM on August 3, 2004

Voip: I can't envision the president embracing/endorsing this technology, and similarly can't leverage the argument for it. Yet.

Update: I just poked around the website, and am amazed at their thrifty international rates. Also, I came across this gem: "...you can make calls to any phone on Earth." HA! Thanks for the info...I’ll research Vonage a bit more and see if it's really obtainable.
posted by naxosaxur at 12:00 PM on August 3, 2004

02b? Where have you seen this? I use WA long distance and it's great, didn't know they're offering local service.
posted by mkultra at 12:53 PM on August 3, 2004

Ugh, verizon in nyc is super lame. This doesn't have anything to do with your question, but:
I moved to greenwich village in mid-august 2001, and called verizon to get service hooked up. They didn't do it for weeks; I was calling them every day from a pay phone, and they always had some new bogus excuse. When did they finally connect my service? September 12th! I guess it took a major emergency to convince them that people really do need to have phone service, and that they should get off their asses.
/rant
posted by Mark Doner at 1:27 PM on August 3, 2004

Yes, Verizon is superiorly the suck. Which is why we are switching providers. I can't tell you how much supervision and maintenance it took on my end to get our account in working order. Thanks o2b for the Working Asset suggestion. Now to compile & present...
posted by naxosaxur at 2:52 PM on August 3, 2004

mkultra: I don't remember where I learned of it, but I called them up and switched, so I can confirm it's true.
posted by o2b at 8:18 PM on August 3, 2004