I finally switched my main business land-line phone to digital cable

I finally switched my main business land-line phone to digital cable. That Bell South business phone (with all the bells and whistles, including a fax line "Ringmaster Service") was costing me about $112/month, for the past five years, Time-Warner cable is charging me $30/month for almost the same service.

So far, it's absolutely indistinguishable from the previous phone service. It sounds perfectly good, everything works fine, and I barely know I changed.

There were a couple of down-sides:

-- The big one - I had to change phone numbers. Once BellSouth gives you a business phone number, you are completely married to BellSouth for as long as you want to keep the phone number. I really didn't want to change numbers, but for $72/month, it seemed worthwhile. The old phone company put a "...This number has been changes. The NEW number..." recording on the old line, and I sent out notices to all of my clients, letting the most important ones know personally. I don't think I will lose any business over this, but regardless, I can't have BellSouth holding me captive for $112/month forever.

-- The digital phone service doesn't allow for faxes. Or, probably not. Maybe it will work, he said. But it would have to share the main phone number. I don't want to put my clients through that, so I got the fax-to-email service that I mentioned in an earlier post here.

-- If the cable goes out, we'll lose TV, internet, and phone. Oh well. I have a cell phone, I can go to a Wi-Fi location and use the internet, and I can do without TV for years if need be.

Anyway, I believe this is turning out to be a good move. I'm on a roll of reducing cyclical expenses; I think most of us don't realize the impact of, for instance, a $72 bill every single month - on and on - forever.