You know, I love Qwest and all, (I must have, since I used to pay then $500 plus per month for 3 business lines, a few features and long distance service in my small call center days), but it’s time that small business people in Qwest’s 14 states do a little complaining about their rates.

The Qwest Choice® Business Plan in my town costs $55 per month for a local line and 15 features. If you’re willing to sign a 1, 2, or 3 year contract with them, the price can drop all the way down to $44 per month. WhooHoo, only $44 per month for 36 months for 1 line and 15 features… Yea! I can hardly wait to be saddled with a $1584 local phone bill. (You’re getting the sarcasm in all this, right?)

The reason I’m giving you this little lesson on Qwest, is because I want to tell you a little story about my brother, who has a small medical business in Washington state. He had 3 small business lines, plus DSL service from Qwest and it was costing him over $200 per month, and that didn’t include long distance service. In this time of economic chaos, dumping an extra few hundred dollars down the drain every month can really make a difference to your quality of life.

So, I finally talked my brother into trying a VoIP plan. We picked Phonepower because it has a second cloned line for free, which means that if you are using your phone, and someone calls, other phones in the office still ring, just like if you had a hunt group. Also, if you are on the phone, another person in the office can call out on the same line. This service offers unlimited local and long distance calling in Canada and the US for $19.95 per month, plus like $3 in taxes.

What we did was have his toll free number pointed to his second Qwest line, and then we switched his main office number over to Phonepower. Phonepower got the whole thing done in less than a week, and the Qwest number wasn’t switched to the Phonepower box until the Phonepower box was working, so there weren’t any lost calls.

It took a week because the first router they sent out was bad. It wasn’t that big of a deal, because my brother just went to the Phonepower website, pushed the tech support “Chat Now” button, and had the Tech check out his router remotely. The guy asked what his phone number was, and then called him back and went through checking the router with him. The Tech then said it was a hardware problem, and that he would send him out another box that day, along with postage to send the broken one back.

The new router came in a couple of days, my brother plugged it into the system and then called me to see what I thought of the sound quality. The sound quality was better than Qwest’s had been, because the lines into my brother’s office were old worn out copper, and Qwest had strung a new line when they put in the DSL. But, he couldn’t surf the web at the same time, so he wanted to know what to do. I had him reboot his modem, and that’s all it took. He could then cruise the web at high speed and talk to me at the same time. Yea!

So, overall, my brother’s total telecom bill, without DSL, now comes to about $30 per month instead of almost $300 per month for the 3 Qwest lines, DSL and long distance service (because he now gets unlimited long distance for free). He now has the 2 lines from Phonepower for $19.95 per month, plus an internet fax line from RapidFax for $9.95 per month. He figures that his business will save over $2500 each year now, over what he would have paid to Qwest.

Fell free to post any comments you may have about Qwest, Phonepower or Rapidfax, so that others can get a second opinion.