VOIP Cost Calculations
So, in August we made a total of 1755 seconds of outgoing calls from our landline.
I currently use voip.ms to make these outgoing calls. Their rate (using premium routing) is 1 cent per minute. (Curiously slightly higher for toll-free calls.) Anyway, I paid a whopping 30.7 cents for all these outgoing calls in August.
Right now, I still have AT&T handling incoming calls. If I were to cancel AT&T, I would save roughly $20 per month.
Instead, I would have to pay for incoming calls as well. As well as 911 (E911) service. Both voip.ms and CallCentric (a service which seems to be mentioned a lot online) provide E911.
With CallCentric, their North America Basic plan includes E911 and 120 minutes of outgoing calls; this costs $1.95 per month. (After 120 minutes, which I probably won’t use, it’s roughly 2 cents a call.) In addition, I can pay $1.95 monthly plus 1.5 cents per minute to receive calls. (I could also pay $5.95 for unlimited outgoing calls, but given how few calls we take, that does not make much sense.)
With CallCentric, the costs would come out to $1.95/month + $1.95/month + 1.5 cents/minute-incoming. So, $3.80/month + incoming 1.5c/minute.
With voip.ms, as I said before, they charge per-minute on outgoing calls. (This is why I picked them in the first place: no monthly fees, and very cheap usage rates.) For incoming calls, the rate is $0.85/month plus 0.9c/minute. For E911, I pay another $1.50/month. So, I’d pay $2.35/month + 1c/minute-outgoing + 0.9c/minute-incoming. (voip.ms also has a $4.25/month unlimited incoming call plan. However, it isn’t clear to me whether this includes E911.)
So, all of this depends on how many incoming calls I receive on average. (Unfortunately, AT&T does not list this on the bill, since it’s basically free—er, included with my monthly service.) I can’t imagine it amounts to more than a few hours per month. And to be honest, the differential between CallCentric and voip.ms is so low, I don’t know that it matters (roughly a buck or two in the end).