Phone

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Home telephone

Even with the growth in popularity in modern forms of telecommunications, including mobile phones, texting, and VoIP (voice calls over the Internet), the traditional fixed line or landline telephone is not likely to become obsolete anytime soon.

However, despite falls in the price of calls from landlines across Europe, phone bills are still relatively expensive. Eircom, the dominant fixed line telephone provider, with about 65pc of the market, recently changed the way it charges for calls.

Before, Eircom customers could make an off-peak local call and receive over five minutes' free talk time for a minimum fee of 6.65c. After that, they were billed per second.

Now customers pay a lower minimum-call set-up charge of 5.95c, but they don't receive any free call time for the fee. This means that the cost of a one-minute local daytime call rose from 6.65 cent to 11.12 cent, an increase of 67pc.

But there are ways to help you slash the cost of your landline bill. However, to take advantage of most of the following tips, you will need an internet connection, preferably broadband.

Check out landline costs

The first and most effective tip is to check out the costs of landline providers other than your current one, particularly if you are still with Eircom. Telecoms regulator ComReg has a independent website, www.callcosts.ie, which allows you to compare prices and find the cheapest service package for the times when you most often use your landline, as well as what types of calls you make.

Use the Callcosts handy ‘usage calculator’ and you’ll be shocked at how expensive Eircom is. For instance, on entering usage details based on 100 minutes a month each of local calls, national calls, calls to mobiles and calls to the UK, and mostly during the evenings and weekends, the website listed 48 packages in order of cost, from the cheapest to the most expensive.

The cheapest package, from Swiftcall, would cost an average of €45.10 a month based on this usage pattern, according to Callcosts.ie. The cheapest Eircom package, which ranked 22nd, would cost €57.83.

What using the website also shows that it pays to know what you use your landline for, such as whether you call mainly during the day or at evenings and weekends; and if you make frequent calls to mobiles, national calls or calls to other countries.

Get rid of the landline altogether?

But if you mostly use your mobile phone to make calls, what about getting rid of the landline altogether? Increasing numbers of households are “mobile-only”, according to telecoms regulator ComReg, in that they no longer have a fixed line telephone and just use their mobiles instead. Around a quarter of all households are now mobile-only.

However, if you need an internet connection at home, doing without a landline phone may only be cost effective if your service provider uses a cable or wireless system. Most broadband internet connections are provided through a telephone-based system, so you will need to pay line rental for this anyway.

Consider telephone and broadband ‘bundles’

Furthermore, there are good deals on broadband internet and telephone ‘bundles’, which means that you can get better value for your phone calls and broadband internet together than you would separately.

For instance, a user with the same usage ‘profile’ as above would pay an average of €69.67 a month for both a 1MB broadband and telephone service with BT Ireland, according to the Callcosts website. This compares to €56.88 for just BT Ireland’s phone service alone – less than €15 difference per month.

The Callcosts website also shows that Eircom’s equivalent bundle would end up the same user costing an average of €82.12 a month.

Voice calls over the Internet

As the recession bites and more of your friends or family emigrate or move overseas for work, you may find yourself making more international calls.

If you have broadband internet you can make huge savings on such calls by using the internet and your PC, where possible, to make your voice calls for free.

This type of service is usually referred to as VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), or Internet telephony (see panel).

To use this service, you must have a working microphone and speaker on your computer, or else buy a headset or a VoIP–specific handset. The person you are calling also needs to have this equipment on their PC.

Use free texting

If you have a mobile and text a lot, a very easy way to save on SMS costs is by texting for free over the Internet.  It might be a tiny bit more hassle, but how often have you been sitting in front of a computer when you picked up your phone to type in a text message?

It’s very simple to set up. Just log into your mobile provider's website (Vodafone, O2, or Meteor) and register with their website (if you haven’t already) and you can start sending "web texts". The person receiving them will get the message just like any text message. And you can send up to 300 messages a month free. The fourth mobile provider, Three Ireland, does not offer free web texts.