If you're looking for high quality home phone service that has plenty of features and is actually affordable, you probably don't want to look to the phone company. This may be surprising to some people- after all, traditionally if you want phone service you turn to the phone company- but conventional phone companies are now subject to some pretty impressive competition from cable TV companies. Comcast in particular provides home phone service that beats anything that the conventional phone companies have been able to come up with.

Cable TV companies like Comcast may seem like a surprising source for telephone service, but it actually makes a lot of sense to use cable technology to deliver phone services. For example, the fact that cable TV companies like Comcast use digital technology to transmit TV programming, also translates into higher quality phone communications. After all, phone service is a lot less bandwidth intensive than TV, so it's really not difficult to roll TV service in with phone service.

The real advantages to getting telephone service through a company like Comcast comes from value. Generally speaking, if you have a conventional land based phone line from a normal phone company, you probably either have a bare bones calling plan that doesn't include any of the popular extras like Caller ID, Call Waiting, and voice mail; or you have a calling plan that includes all of those features on a play that you pay significantly more for. Either way, you probably pay way too much for your phone service for what you get.

Companies like Comcast provide an alternative to this quagmire of inferior service, excessive cost, and all around poor value. That's because this type of calling plan includes those extras that can make using a phone more convenient, yet a plan from Comcast is a much better value because it costs about as much as the aforementioned bare bones alternative that a traditional phone company provides.

If you haven't tried the extra features like Caller ID and such that were mentioned earlier, they're definitely worth taking a good look at. That's because they can make such a big difference in how you use your phone. Caller ID would have to be the best example of this. After all, the ability that it gives you to see who is calling has immeasurable value because you don't always want to talk to any given person who is calling at any given time that they call. Caller ID is a great way to combat telemarketers and it allows you to talk to other people on your terms rather than theirs. Another advantage to Caller ID is that it provides you with a record of the calls that were made to your number- regardless of whether you pick up or not.

Voice mail is a good one to go with caller ID because it provides an additional way to filter your calls. For example, just because you look at your Caller ID screen when your phone rings and decide that you don't want to talk to somebody, that doesn't mean that you don't want to hear what they have to say. Voice mail takes care of that by providing the advantages of an answering machine without the upkeep.

These are just a few of the reasons why cable TV providers including Comcast are good alternatives to the phone company when it comes to land line phone services in your home.