PHONE SERVICE

The bursting of the telecom bubble has cost investors plenty, but some of that cash is making its way into consumers' wallets. With a little research, you can snag as much as a couple hundred dollars in savings on your phone bill next year.

Don't shop only for the lowest per-minute rate, though. The new unlimited packages may be bigger money savers for long talkers. AT&T is offering unlimited calls to other AT&T customers for $20 a month, and MCI is offering unlimited local and long-distance calls for as little as $50 a month.

Cut the cord.Anyone willing to take a little more drastic action could save even more. Cellphone fans should consider getting rid of their land lines altogether. And switching to prepaid cards for calls made away from home can save several dollars per call, which can quickly add up. Warehouse clubs offer some of the best deals for prepaid cards, says Lee Biddle, telecommunications analyst for the San Diego-based Utility Consumers' Action Network. Sam's Club, for example, sells AT&T cards that average 3.5 cents per minute. Give one to anyone who calls you collect, as a one-minute, cross-country collect call using AT&T can cost more than $5.

You can even take advantage of competition to reduce the cost of directory- assistance calls. Sprint now charges $2.49 for each long-distance directory-assistance call. It pays to contact your local and long-distance companies to see how much they each charge. It may be cheaper to dial 411 or 00 instead. It may be cheaper still to call information on your cellphone, notes Rich Sayers, founder of www.10-10phonerates.com. Cheapest of all: Look up the number; Sayers has links to directories on his Web site.

If all this seems like too much trouble, beware. Doing nothing could cost you plenty. Some telecoms are trying to maximize profits by raising prices for remaining customers. In one example, effective December 1, bankrupt MCI upped rates on some of its older plans by more than 25 percent. -Kim Clark