Phone/Internet reduction in NZ

[JT]

Hi fellow moustachians

Just thought I'd share a recent saving made with the phone and internet costs.

Typically, our home phone would only be called by cold callers, and we tend to use viber and skype for calls - so the home line was becoming a little redundant.

The cost of one phone line and 20gb for Internet p/m was just over $110 p/m and I thought this was a ridiculous expense we could do something about.

We decided to check out other service providers.

Voila!  We found a deal for Naked Broadband of 50gb for $55 p/m.  In effect, this killed off our home line. (Goodbye cold callers!)

Annual costs before move to new service provider:

mobile  $45 p/m = $540 p/a
phone/internet $110 p/m = $1,320 p/a
Total annual cost for phones/internet = $1,860

Annual costs after move to new service provider:

mobile $45 p/m = $540 p/a
internet $55 p/m = $660 p/a
Total annual cost for mobile/internet = $1,200

Overall savings per year: $660

This may seem small but it's made a good contribution to my efforts to reduce the annual budget. ($22,000)

Our household has one adult and one child.

I've considered dumping the mobile too but it's important for me in terms of communicating with my son and the outside world.  Also the plan provides 3gb of data every month and at $45 p/m it's a bargain!

I did consider going without internet at home but my studies are online and I keep in touch with family and friends via skype.

I'm pretty pleased with the savings and would love to hear what other people are paying and doing with their internet, mobile and home phone.  Is anyone out there going without?

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

[happy]

We're in the process of structuring our phones internet, but making modest progress. There are some good deals out there but we are limited on what is available where we live: we can't get some of the best internet ones.
 
We were paying around $225+/month for phone, internet and 3 mobiles. I'm not prepared to have the teens go without mobiles, so that jacks up the price.  We decided to be smarter and more organised about how we use the phones.

Recontracted home phone and internet down to $90/month. Will save $5 by getting a paperless bill, and returning a handset which we no longer rent, since we have an answer machine. ( Get a load of this: to return the rental phone you have to contact 2 different departments within the phone company to get a "number" , then take the phone and the number to the phone company shop, to get them to take it off the bill. However  as a Mustachian I will exercise my inner Hasselhoff and do this for $3/month).

The home phone is for receiving calls/messages only : with the new deal it costs a fortune to ring out. However we did get a huge amount more of data, which will be well used.

My phone will go from $43/month to $30/month prepaid or maybe less. Saving: $2 for a paperless bill, $11/month for email, which I decided I could do without. Son is unchanged @$30/month and daughter going down to $20/2months. 

We will  install Skype for some regular long distance calls. Calls on mobile within the immediate family are free. Son usually carries a big call credit as he is a "texter", so we are using his phone to make calls when needed.

So we are down to $160/month, which I still think is outrageous. Only chance for a further reduction is if I can get my usage down...should be possible I think. Still thats about $65/month saved. ($780/year). With a bit of luck I might get another $15/month off mine which would be $80/month off ($960/year).

[Daley]

Happy-

On your home phone front, look into a few VoIP options in your country (Australia). A couple that floated to my attention from the list are Ace Communications, which provides a full VoIP service with DID (phone number), and ClicknCall, an outfit that only handles outgoing VoIP calls and lets you set your caller ID to any phone number you own.

Stay away from bundling services with your ISP. World around, it's always going to cost more than doing VoIP on your own. Also, it'll probably be cheaper to buy your own equipment off of Amazon or Ebay than it will even from the VoIP provider.

For the New Zealand folks-

I found an outfit called Kiwi VoIP Ltd., that might be worth looking into. They appear to be a choice provider for at least one outfit that does high-volume hospitality industry services in the area. Take that for what it's worth. You should look into any provider I link and vette for yourself.

Home phone's always going to be cheaper than mobile per minute, and VoIP will always be cheaper than whatever's provided by the phone company or your ISP. Take advantage, and you won't have to spend as much on the expensive mobiles. What little bit of learning curve involved in setup will pay off in spades for years.

I'm glad a lot of people use Skype, because it means they're spending less on calling, but Skype has problems, they aren't always the cheapest solution, and you can't use the service without a smartphone, a computer, or a USB toy that requires a computer. All are options that chew up more electricity and cost more to implement. Use a VoIP/SIP provider and an ATA, and you get cheap phone service with the convenience of landline use while still retaining the smartphone option (and even some featurephones that run Symbian S60) if you like that sort of thing.