Issue Date: October 20, 2002
Long distance deals
Just type in your area code and number of minutes used each month, and up pops the best provider for you.
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After watching the WorldCom meltdown and the disaster that hit most of the phone companies, like any good consumer I wondered whether I could take advantage of the situation. Hey, I reasoned, if they're in trouble, maybe they're getting desperate. So, could desperation mean falling long distance rates? Rather than call every phone company, I went to the Net to test my hypothesis.
The answer: a definitive yes. I came to this conclusion easily by visiting numerous sites with complex search engines that detail phone rates with dozens of long distance providers. Many, like saveonphones.com and id.net, are powered by an engine run by Cognigen, a telecom services provider. As with most of the others, at saveonphones.com you type in your area code and phone prefix in the search engine box, along with the number of long distance minutes you use, and a range of companies will pop up with their prices and Web links. I was shocked to find rates as low as 0.79 cents a minute for using only about 350 intrastate and interstate minutes a month. Most, however, were from obscure providers like AccuChat, Talk America, Unitel and Planet Earth Communications. Still, it almost makes you want to root for the phone companies' demise.
Such low rates can make a person skeptical of many of these unheard-of outfits. My fiancée joined one and admits the customer service is terrible, but the phone works and the rates are insanely good -- and that's enough to keep her happy.
If you can't stomach being with a phone company named AccuChat, there is a comparison service that includes even the big players. At SmartPrice.com, type in your area code, prefix and number of minutes used, and it'll shoot out a list with the likes of MCI and AT&T, along with lesser-known discounters. The result was less surprising: MCI and AT&T had plans for 7 cents a minute, and the smaller ones offered 3 to 4 cents a minute.
Regardless of the rates, I found the exercise very beneficial: I priced most of the market with just a few mouse clicks. It also turned out to validate my hunch: Phone companies are desperate. So much the better for consumers like you and me!
-- David Lipschultz
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My Web: Ejovi Nuwere
Movers, shakers and their bookmarks
At age 14, Brooklyn, N.Y.-born Ejovi Nuwere was one of the world's most accomplished computer hackers -- and big bucks weren't far off. At 15, he illegally pointed and clicked his way past an Internet service provider's password-required zones, and then brazenly called to tell the execs what a breeze the bust-in had been. Their reaction? They offered him a job as a computer security specialist. Now 22, Nuwere has a new tell-all book, Hacker Cracker (William Morrow, $24.95), about his self-taught breaking-and-entering cyberskills and has started his own computer consulting firm. "I realized early on I can make more money if I play everything legit," he says.
-- He talks with other techies at slashdot.org, where regulars comment on the latest Internet happenings.
-- He picks up cool-and-unusual factoids for cocktail parties at howstuffworks.com. "I like to seem like an expert at something, even if I'm not."
-- He power-shops at catalogs.google.com. "They have the pages of every mail-order catalog you can think of," from J. Crew to Harry and David
to Radio Shack.
-- For a good laugh he checks out userfriendly.org (for wily Web jokes) and dilbert.com (for good old-fashioned
ha-ha humor).
-- Sara Anderson
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