Traveling internationally can be a major problem for small business owners when they find that using a cell phone can incur enormous roaming charges. In fact, even if you do not answer your phone, you may pay $1-$2 per minute for every call that rings when you are roaming overseas!

Phone.com has a way to help business people save substantial money on phone costs when traveling.

The idea is simple. Before you board the plane, you forward your cell phone calls to your Phone.com business telephone number (follow instructions from your cell phone provider for that. For example – click here to see how to do it on an AT&T cell phone). When you reach the destination country, you purchase a low cost “pay as you go” SIM card and place that in your (unlocked) cell phone or rent a cheap phone with the SIM card.

At your convenience from your hotel room, you set up your Phone.com extension using the web-based Phone.com Control Panel to forward calls to your new local number that comes with the SIM card.

Boom! There is no roaming charge and, in many countries, no cost for incoming calls either.

As for outbound calling, you can dial out of your phone and pay whatever the local SIM card d deal offers but the better way is to obtain a Global Number from Phone.com (we have numbers for over 40 countries) this will allow you to place calls using your own Phone.com Caller ID by dialing only your Global Number (a local call) and setting up menus to dial all your contacts.

You can also use our Phone.com Mobile VoIP App on your Smart Phone (if you have one) and dial out using your Hotel Wi-Fi with no International or roaming charges.

As you land back in the US, replace the SIM card and undo the cell phone call forwarding and you are done!

You can also set up schedules to make sure calls do not come in at undesirable hours in case you travel far off from your normal time zone.

Economically-minded users can make all that happen before they fly, and then cancel when they return. There are no long terms contracts at Phone.com.

So what can be simpler or more economical than that? Nothing! Remember: Phone.com customer service agents are always happy to help you with any questions.

The Phone.com spam caller list is a wonderful feature that allows customers to block calls from specific numbers. This feature just got better! You can now block call patterns, which includes blocking an entire area code. Here’s a step by step guide on how to block a number pattern. For the sake of an example, let’s block all calls from area code 325.

Step 1: In your Phone.com control panel navigate to “Call Info” and then to “Manage Spam Callers List”

Step 2: Click the “Add A Number To Block” button.

Step 3: You will need to check the “Starts With” check box. You can then enter “+1325” which will block all calls from numbers beginning with 325. The note field is for your reference. Once you have completed that, click the “Add” button.

I told you it was easy. If you have any questions whatsoever regarding this new feature, our awesome customer service representatives are here to help 24 hours a day and 7 day a week!

Conference calls seem to be a necessary part of business today.  In days of yore calls consisted of 2 phones, 1 on each end, sometimes there’d be a speakerphone or two involved but that was it.  When a group of people had to talk they’d have to meet face to face, this was prior to the Phone.com Communicator app of course.  Now though when face to face isn’t necessary but getting a group together on a call is we just use a conference calling bridge.

Phone.com offers the best bridge in the business.  Features like 500 seats on the call, flexible moderator controls and one that’s really nice if you have regular calls, a permanent conferencing number.  That static bridge means you can save the number into your address book and not have to ever dial it again.

I’ve included two pictures, one of our participant controls and one of the moderator controls.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to give us a shout on Facebook or Twitter.  We’re here to listen and help.

When I call a company I have some expectations.   I was shocked when I called an established businesses conference call bridge and heard something along the lines of “this is a free conference call service”.  My initial thought was doesn’t their phone service include conference calling like Phone.com?  Besides this is a horrible image to portray to me, that your company can’t afford a conference call bridge.

Don’t get me wrong, every penny counts when running a small business and I don’t suggest anyone should spend those pennies without a need but there’s no reason to use a service that announces that it’s free, making your company look cheap.  Every Phone.com extension gets it’s own conference call number or bridge as it’s commonly referred to.  I’m always ecstatic to host calls because I get to use my Phone.com bridge, it’s a bit of a pride thing now, knowing I’m not using some free service.  The really sad thing was these companies can definitely afford a proper bridge.

If you use Phone.com service then make sure to check out our HD Conferencing.  You can access it from the box on the left of your extensions control panel right under the Settings option. If you have any questions message us on Facebook or Twitter.