Bundling Up For Spring

Bundling up is something we associate with cold weather. But this type of bundling is a way to save you money on your telephone bill and make paying for phone service a bit easier.

Bundling means to combine two or more services for a single price. In this case, we're talking about local and long distance bundling for your home or business landline. Why bundle? It's a way to pay less for a combination of services and get just one phone bill each month.

Cleartel Communications offers 3 residential bundles, so you can pick the service that makes the most sense for how you use local and long distance calling. I ran a quick check for my location in Illinois and found the lowest cost plan to be the Cleartel Simple plan. This plan is designed to compete with the service offered by your local phone company. You get unlimited local minutes but long distance is billed by the minute.

If you know you are going to be making some long distance calls each month, the Residential Enhanced plan includes 60 long distance minutes along with unlimited local calls plus features.

For those who spend a lot of time on the phone, the Residential Unlimited plan gives you both unlimited local calling and unlimited long distance calls. It also includes calls to Canada for up to 4,000 minutes per month. You select the features you want from a list that includes such niceties as Caller ID, 3-way calling, Call Return, Call Forwarding, Call Waiting and more. You may be paying extra for those features now, but they're included with the Enhanced and Unlimited plans.

Cleartel service is also for small businesses. You choose between two plans. Get the Business Enhanced if your business is strictly local and you rarely make long distance calls. You'll be billed extra for the long distance calls. The Business Unlimited Plan gives you 2,000 long distance minutes in addition to unlimited local minutes. Plus you get unlimited features. Most businesses will find this to be just the right amount of service but at a cost savings to what they are paying now.

In most cases you'll be able to transfer the phone number you have now for personal and business continuity. You'll need a working telephone number in order to make the switch from your current service. If you are new to an area and don't have a telephone number, you'll need to get set up with the incumbent local phone company before you can switch to any competitive services.

Prices for Cleartel residential and business bundles start at just $26.95. Taxes and fees are extra but these should be similar to what you are paying now.