Goodbye landline! Phone + internet $52/month

[SailinAway]

If you happen to be in an area served by Consolidated Communications:

When Consolidated raised my phone + internet rate to $125 a month, I switched to Tracfone unlimited calling for $200 a year and Consolidated internet only for $32.59 plus $3 tax. This lowered my total yearly cost from $1500 to $627!

The fine print:

(1) Tracfone requires a 2-year commitment with a $129 early cancellation fee

(2) The internet fee is for 3MB. Too low for many people's standards, but it works fine for me. I rarely have a problem streaming YouTube videos. 20 MB is more expensive, but I've heard that Consolidated doesn't have the infrastructure to deliver 20 MB.

(3) I had to call Consolidate three times to get them to offer me the new-customer rate rather than the old-customer rate. They will tell you a different story each time, so make sure they've written down the rate they tell you and the agent's name.

(4) I only get 2 bars on my cell phone at home, so letting go of the landline was a risk. I tested my cell phone by making some calls to clients and found it was OK if the phone is suspended about 6 feet from the floor. Good enough. Actually the sound is much better than the landline

(5) Tracfone has been reliable for me as an emergency phone over the past year. No outages, rarely a dropped call. The exception is trying to get into my account online, which led to a fruitless two-hour call with customer service. As with most companies, "We are escalating this problem and we will contact you" never ever results in a callback. Customer service is in some foreign country.

(6)Tracfone was bought by Verizon. Verizon has committed to keeping Tracfone running for some unclear period, so how long this deal will last is unknown.

(7) The Tracfone deal includes unlimited talk and text but only 24 GB of data per year. I don't care about the data as I never use my phone for the internet

If anyone pays less than $627 a year for reliable phone and internet I'd like to hear about it.