How much does that call cost?
You might be surprised
July 29, 2010—If there's any proof of how confusing our phone bills can be, it's that a call to a friend 20 miles away can be more expensive than a call to, say, Warsaw, Poland.

That's right. AT&T and Frontier (formerly Verizon) charge 16 cents to 17 cents PER MINUTE for local toll calls, a.k.a. local long distance. A quick Internet search for prepaid calling-card rates to Warsaw, Poland found prices as low as about a penny to 2 cents per minute.

Local Toll is an odd category of landline calls, roughly 15 miles or more from a caller's home, but still within the local-calling area—and CUB has seen plenty of consumers get slammed by high bills for these calls.

The Land of Lincoln is divided into local-calling areas—also called Market Service Areas (MSAs) or Local Access and Transportation Areas (LATAs)—that help determine the price of a call. It’s wise to review the different categories of calls—local, local toll, and long distance—to avoid high bills.


1. Local
Definition: A call to any place roughly 15 miles from home. (It's actually rated by the distance between the calling center that serves the caller's home and the center that serves the person being called.)

Best Bet: Beware of bloated calling plans that give you too many calls and too many calling features. Your best bet is a landline phone company's standard rates or the CUB-created Consumer's Choice Plans (for AT&T customers), which charge much less than typical landline or cell-phone calling plans.


2. Local Toll or Local Long Distance
Definition: Beyond roughly 15 miles from home, but still within a phone company's local-calling area. These are the infamous calls that can be more expensive than international calls.

Best Bet: Avoid your phone company's standard rates, which hover around 16-17 cents per minute. Use your cell phone, a prepaid calling card, or a traditional low-cost long-distance plan, such as Pioneer Telephone (see below).


3. Long Distance
Definition: A call to any place outside your local calling area, or LATA, but still within the continental United States.

Best Bet: Use a cell phone for such calls or a low-cost long-distance plan, such as Pioneer Telephone (2-3 cents per minute, $10 CUB credit). Beware of long-distance plans that charge you more than 4 cents per minute or slap you with a high monthly fee, $3 on up, even if you don't make any long-distance calls.