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Knowing that my PhoneGnome keeps track of every call I make and its duration, I set about analyzing my phone bill to see if a measured-service plan could save me money on “local” calls.

I currently pay $17.25/mo for flat rate local calling.

Verizon, my local phone company, has a measured-service plan which costs $10/mo + $0.04 + $0.01*(D-1), where D is the duration of a local call in minutes. This is a peak hours rate.

According to data available to me on my.phonegnome.com, my last 275 PSTN, non-800 number local calls are of average duration 2.97 minutes. Round that up to 3 minutes. For purposes of this analysis, we’ll assume all these calls occur during what the Verizon rated plan considers peak hours 8:00am to 4:59pm. In fact, my.phonegnome.com tells me that some calls occur off-hours, when rates would be cheaper on this meausured-service plan. But let’s take worst-case, and assume peak hours calling time.

Each of those calls would therefore add $0.06 to my bill if I had the measured-service plan.

So I have $7.25/mo to play with ($17.25 – $10.00). With that $7.25 I can buy about 120 3 minute phone calls.

But my.phonegnome.com tells me that during the last three months, I place on average 69 local calls per month. So those calls would have cost me $4.14/mo, not the full $7.25/mo budget.

But wait, there’s more! The measured plan also includes a $3/mo allowance before per-minute charges are applied. So those 69 calls on average cost me $1.14.

So I save on average about $6.00/month if I switch to the rated plan — without modifying my local calling behavior.

Remember this is worst-case: I treated all calls as occurring during peak hours, which in fact is not the case. I make a number of evening phone calls, too, which are cheaper under the Verizon plan. It was already more trouble than it was worth to treat those calls as off-hours.

Verizon in Los Angeles also uses a premium “Zone Usage Measurement” (ZUM) charge for calls between 13 and 16 miles from my home phone. I’ve not treated that here, as most calls I make are pretty much to the same handful of numbers within a few miles of home.

So not only does PhoneGnome save me a ton on domestic long distance, it also allows me dwell upon my actual call data and analyze it.

Disclaimer: I do consulting to PhoneGnome.com. I have also been a Phone Company customer since I reached the age of reason.

Update: Here is a simple perl script to help analyze your local calling assuming you are a PhoneGnome user.

[tags]phonegnome,verizon, ben franklin[/tags]