Chapter 3 - Free Internet Phone Features You're Paying For Now
Saving Money
SBC Charges Versus Broadband Phone Charges
Calls at Zero Cents Per Minute
Handling, or Not, Calls
Call Waiting
Caller ID
Call Forwarding
Conference Calling
Other Features
Choose Your Area Code
Encrypted Conversations
Free Branch Office Connections
Optional ($$) Features
Virtual Numbers
800 Numbers
Video Phones
Redial
Opening to Chapter 3:
Telephones used to be simple. Dial. Talk. Hang up.
Of course, a few decades ago our choices were simple but unpalatable. Pick up the phone you leased from AT&T. Dial (physically, with your fingers going in circles around the actual dial) a number. Talk through a decent local connection, but a poor long distance connection. Pay dollars per minute long distance prices. If you didn't like that situation, you could, ah, write letters, because there was only one phone company.
Movie Alert: Learn all about TPC (The Phone Company) in the marvelous 1967 paranoid comedy thriller starring James Coburn called The President's Analyst . Great movie.
Today all phones do more than just dial and talk. Everyone has become spoiled by the modern features every phone has, such as automatic redial, one-button dialing, and a variety of other amazing phone tricks. And the services from the telephone company, like Caller ID, call forwarding, call waiting, *69 return call, call blocking, and voice mail, among others, thrill many people all but one day per month.
That one day, of course, is when they pay their phone bill. Each of those services costs money, sometimes a lot of money.
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