Do all long-distance carriers now charge a monthly fee?

 I have AT&T as my LD carrier. Several years ago I switched over to a
plan that gave me a flat LD rate and charged me $5/month.

At the time it seemed like a good idea but now I'm sure I'm losing
money on it, and the monthly rate has gone up since then.  Until I
went on to that plan, if I didn't make out of state calls, I AT&T
didn't charge me anything.

I figured I'd switch back to the way things used to be. Nope.  There's
is no longer any plan where you don't pay anything if you don't make
any LD calls. Cheapest plan they have is $2.99/Mo

Not a tremendous amount of money, but wondering if there's any LD
carrier that doesn't charge anything if I don't make calls.

Thanks

  Doc wrote:

You also do not have to designate a default long distance carrier at all.

We dropped AT&T when their monthly charges went from $3 to $9 even with
no calls.  We use OneSuite for all our long distance and have no
designated LD carrier.  Calls to toll-free numbers still work as before
(which is how one makes calls via prepaid services such as OneSuite),
but if we try to dial any regular LD number, we get a message that we
must dial a long distance carrier code first (1-0 followed by a
three-digit code).

This is actually better for us, since we never could keep track of which
in-state calls were long distance and ended up paying much higher rates
for them before.

--
Evelyn C. Leeper
He who knows only his own side of the case
knows little of that.  -John Stuart Mill

 timeOday wrote:

Yes, but $10 lasts for six months (I think).  Even with our low usage,
we use that much.  (Don't forget, you can use these minutes anywhere,
not just from your home phone.  In fact, you can share the minutes with,
say, your parents.)

--
Evelyn C. Leeper
He who knows only his own side of the case
knows little of that.  -John Stuart Mill

 

I was with Power Net Global until recently.  They did not
charge a monthly fee.  I dropped them when I went 100% cellular.

-john-

--
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John A. Weeks III           952-432-2708            john@johnweeks.com
Newave Communications                         http://www.johnweeks.com
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PowerNet Global is my carrier also. They don't charge a fee, and have
very low rates.