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One possible angle: If your ISP offers 512k, 1.5MB, and 3MB, and you signed up for 3MB, you can argue that it should be AT LEAST 1.5MB, because if not, what's the point in paying extra?

OTOH...

Pricing Terms and Conditions -> Service Description -> "... No minimum level of speed is guaranteed..."

Google for "<your ISP here> dsl minimum".

If you read the AT&T writeup on what to do with annoying calls here http://contact.bellsouth.com/acc/ you will see that every branch of this decision tree ends with "you should change your phone number", "you should notify FCC or authorities" or "it may be annoying, but it is probably completely legal and we can do any thing about it". This connotes that the decision was made by AT&T to basically tell it's customers, "it's your problem, not ours".

Simply put: The phone provider should also 'stiff' the upstream provider based upon fraudulent calls. Take a look at this list and tell me this bill isnt so loaded, assuming they paid non-plan minutes.

And there is the issue with the Voicemail machine being hacked to send calls.. Go after their throat, legally, and drain them for all they're worth.

it's hard to argue that they should pay $50 a month for broadband.

Where do you live? Here in Illinois, these users qualify for AT&T's $10 program. I only pay $20 a month for cable internet (bundled with $40 basic cable). Those options are cheaper than some dial-ups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_Bell
http://www.bellsouth.com/

While I don't have Verizon, I am in an AT&T (former Bellsouth) region. The alternative choice is Comcast. Previously, I worked for AT&T and have decided to never do business with them again unless there is no other choice. There are a number of reasons for this, but mostly privacy concerns.

While Comcast may not be any better service speed, non-disruption, customer support, or cost, I prefer them over being forced to have an AT&T phone line - we don't have naked DSL here yet.

If/when DSL2+ becomes available in my neighborhood, then I'll consider going with a third party DSL provider.

Actually, I'm just happy that AT&T isn't as stupid as BellSouth was in calling their "DSL service" "FastAccess" - talk about stupid. Legal department idea. DSL was for wholesale, FastAccess for consumer and small biz. Early adopters couldn't figure out what it was back in the 1990s.
At least AT&T/BellSouth has honored the FCC agreement for cheap DSL Service @ $10/month. I've convinced Mom to get it after 5 years of trying for the $14.95/month and failing. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/18/220240&from=rss and signup here: http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/index.html - look for the DSL at even a Lower Price! and mind the javascript and requirements. Not good for anyone who formerly had broadband.

The $10 DSL deal is only available online, so their phone reps aren't going to know about it. Yes, it's hidden and tough to find, but it is here: http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/inetsr vcs_agreement_plans_pop.html

It includes some 'gotchas' like a 12-month commitment and the $10 price is only good until 2009.

http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/inetsr vcs_agreement_plans_pop.html right there on their website, thanks consumerist!

Its there for anyone signing up, as its on their page.

I'm still stuck on crappy dialup or one way services. :(.

911 is more than just a fowarding number on the POTS side of things.

When you dial 911 or *something on your cell phone that is simply a forwarded number to a regular POTS line at the PSAP.

If and ONLY IF your carrier and the local PSAP are setup for wireless 911 does a 911 call get routed similar to a regular 911 call which then provides info like the cell site and an ESTIMATED ADDRESS its not exact and this level of cellular 911 is available to a very small area.

911 on POTS is not a forwarded number its routed special and it comes in on 911 trunks, NOT on regular lines. This will help to understand the 911 process:
http://contact.bellsouth.com/email/bbs/phase2/how9 11works.html

As for VOIP and 911 thanks to voncrap and the hordes of non technical users VOIP is now saddled with this issue. Plain and simple there should big huge warnings when signing up that 911 and emergency calling are not supported YOU the CUSTOMER need to make plans to deal with this by 1) Keeping a basic POTS line 2) Having a cell phone 3) Take your safety into your own hands and be prepared

US citizens pay a flat rate? Thats news to me. For as long as I can remember my landline has unlimited local calls but charges for long distance by the minute. Of course now services like Vonage are changing that, but traditional phone will remain the same I'm sure.

One of my biggest peaves with the whole VoIP 911 nonsense is that Vonage is simply trying to comply with the FCC regs, yet all (there are only a few left right?) the legacy telcos are spreading FUD about this like you don't see news stories about people calling 911 and getting disconnected or hung up on if they have Verizon. I have called 911 from a cell and had to be trasferred because the cell carrier needed to connect me with the State Police instead of the local cops nearest to the cell tower, or at least that's what the operator told me.

I don't see the VoIP 911 being any better or worse than cell phone 911.

Here is a pretty good article from BellSouth (ATT now?) with graphics that shows the basics of regular 911 vs cellular 911.

http://contact.bellsouth.com/email/bbs/phase2/how9 11works.html

I got a three page web site up and running in about half an hour. I linked to my external blog (although the idiots here http://www.bellsouth.com/ have blogs blocked), uploaded a couple of pictures and changed the color and layout of the pages. It's crude, but elegant. At least it doesn't require a Dummy book for Frontpage. Although the page is crashing my Firefox on Windows occasionally. It does not crash either IE or Firefox under Ubuntu. Now, link it to Picasa and you got me sold cold. Better yet, an instalable client in your PC and add in an icon library and you got me sold. I for one welcome our new FrontPage busting overlords.

What might make more sense would be a pay-per-use plan, where you pay a flat rate for X amount of bandwidth or whatever and more if you use more.

I think if you check http://www.bellsouth.com/ you will find they are nice people. If you hit refresh, you can see the different ads that help them advertise. Help them out and check out an excellent site - http://www.bellsouth.com/ Make sure you refresh, so you can see all the different pretty things they provide!

I think if you check http://www.bellsouth.com/ you will find they are nice people. If you hit refresh, you can see the different ads that help them advertise. Help them out and check out an excellent site - http://www.bellsouth.com/ Make sure you refresh, so you can see all the different pretty things they provide!

Where are you getting that nearly $40 price from for BellSouth DSL? Their 256K plan is only $24.95/month. The 1.5M plan is $32.95/month, and the 3M plan I have is $42.95/month. The plans are listed HERE.

I'm not sure where you live and who your baby bell is but....my DSL ISP, BellSouth, offers what they call DSL Lite, which is always on but has much lower bandwith for less cost, $24.95 a month.

http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/index. html

I hate replying to my own posts but here is a link of what people that don't have the correct user agent string see.

I find it very condescending and frankly, as you may have guessed, it's pissed me off.

• Do you own a phone?
• Are you a loser?
• Do you live in America?

888b. 8___ ___db____
8__.8 8___ __dPYb___
8wwP' 8___ .dPwwYb._
8____ 8888 dP____Yb_

• Do you own a phone?
• Are you a loser?
• Do you live in America?

888b. 8___ ___db____
8__.8 8___ __dPYb___
8wwP' 8___ .dPwwYb._
8____ 8888 dP____Yb_

• Do you own a phone?
• Are you a loser?
• Do you live in America?

888b. 8___ ___db____
8__.8 8___ __dPYb___
8wwP' 8___ .dPwwYb._
8____ 8888 dP____Yb_

Well, "Southern Bell" is BellSouth, and though they are organized by the CWA, there's no imminent strike. SBC must be some other neck of the woods.

This is all pretty well known to those watching the E911 drama unfold.

The easiest and simplest method for most carriers to comply with E911 is using triangulation. Indeed, bellsouth even posted a nice article about the various ways location can be obtained for cell phone users.

Obviously, with a GPS stuck in the phone itself this becomes really trivial, but even with normal phones you can use a variety of techniques, like Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) and Angle Of Arrival (AOA) and even Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD) to triangulate the location of a wireless caller.

The carriers are already using this technology across the US, and many phones are now available with GPS integrated.

Welcome to the future.

My local telco (Bellsouth) offers unlimited long distance to all 50 states for $24.99 a month. I don't use long distance much, but my roommate does, and he was paying upwards of $85 / month with our previous ATT service.

Wow! That's a fantastic price. As a vonage user, if I got that price, I'd seriously consider switching back to BellSouth. Unfortunately, BellSouth offers DSL + local + long distance for $103/mo. With Vonage over my cable modem, I'm paying $68/mo ($42 for cable modem, $26 for vonage). That's $35/mo less than the BellSouth Bundle. Of course, my vonage plan doesn't give me unlimited LD. But I don't need unlimited LD. I did some research before I switched, and the largest number of LD minutes that I've used in the last 18 mos was 400. So the basic vonage plan providing 500 LD mins was plenty.

But your example just goes to show the point. If the Baby Bell's are willing to compete on price, then fine, I'll consider them. But shame on them for trying to regulate someone who built a better mouse trap that costs less!

I, too, thought about buying the 'zapper. I opted for BellSouth's privacy director instead. It forces all "Unknown" callers to identify themselves, *before* my phone rings. I then get a recorded message of the caller, where I have the option to simply blow them off. My telemarketing calls have screeched to a halt. To bad it costs me $6 a month. Oh well.

The guys from Bellsouth weren't just working the newsgroups on the side, posting responses in their free time. This was their job, customer interaction in several facets. One of those exposure points was DSLR.

And they weren't reprimanded, told to stop posting, whatever - these guys are no longer posting, as Andy Houtz said in one of the links, because of organizational changes. Bellsouth has gone through a lot of organizational changes lately (check the news) - TSG, the group handling the forum support, was apparently just one of the casualties.

Opinions, ideas expressed above are all mine - not my employer's.

So I followed the link and read the article. What did I find? That the comments referenced in the linked article are being taken waaaaay out of context. I'm posting anonymously for what should be obvious reasons (mega hint: my employer is running those JD Power and Associates commercials in the Southeast US). Tech support was not reprimanded, forbidden, or any such nonsense. Tech support in the forums has stopped due to organizational changes. That's right - people were shuffled, positions eliminated, departments consolidated. This isn't some master plan to control and spin all information available to customers. How do I know? Read that part about my employer again.

Best.

Cheapest

This + Call Forwarding = Easiest.

Suggestion: You can find out more by asking the "You've got questions, we've got blank stares" salesclerks. They are actually overqualified for this question, but I'm sure they can take a moment out of this busy stereo and computer selling season to help you for a moment. Or you could simply Ask Google next time.

Either of these should get your answer much faster than Ask Slashdot. :-)

HTH.

Instead of spending money on hardware, take a look at what you have to offer from your local telephone company. Bellsouth offers a package called 'Privacy Director'. They only charge an additional $1.75/month for this. What is does is block all numbers that don't carry ANI and gives them an auto-attendant. Sometimes it blocks international numbers but you get the call anyway. I went from 100 spam calls a week to 0. Here is the link to more information.

"To reduce the number of telemarketing calls you receive from national companies, you can write a letter to the following association and request the removal of your number from their list." (Also lists several states no-call lists).

Telephone Preference Service Direct Marketing Association
Post Office Box 9014
Farmingdale, New York 11735-9014

The above is a 'one time' deal. The NoCall lists are usually only for a year or two. We wrote to the above address and signed up for the Georgia NoCall list and have recieved almost no marketing calls over the last year.

As a bonus, if you sign up for the Georgia NoCall list, each Telemarketing call you recieve subjects them to a $2000 fine. :)

Is it just our local telco, or is HDSL2 (one pair) garbage? We've always had HDSL circuits and they work fine, but then they started putting in HDSL2 circuits between us (ISP) and T1 customers a while back. One of them had the circuit for about a month or two, was offline more than online, until the telco converted it to HDSL (and since then haven't had problems.) Another customer has an HDSL2 circuit, and to be honest, is down as we speak (has been all weekend - had to call telco the other day and have them test it just to get the thing to work!)

Unless something's up with our telco then stay away from HDSL2 if possible. :)

I found a pretty good client. Its not as convenient as AOL IM, but its not that bad either. Each user gets issued an ID and its cumbersome to find out who is 'available', etc, but amazingly enough the client base far exceeds any other instant message protocol that I know of.

I like it, its great, but its not free like AOL's IM :-(

Anyways, if you'd like to give it a spin, click here for a bit more info, at least thats the one I use. Cheers!

My cutoff is on March 1. I've currently got a 144k IDSL circuit, mainly because I'm 26480ft from my local CO. My ISP, Speakeasy.org , is giving me a "reimbursement" of sorts. Since I now have a dedicated pair ran out to my house, I'll be going the ISDN route. Bellsouth, my phone company, offers dual BRI's with POTS and caller id, call waiting compatibility for only $84/month (240hrs). Nothing like good 'ole ISDN. I'm just going to miss stat IP's and 144k channel speed.