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I know that my DSL provider, Cavalier Telephone has been doing this for years. I called their technical support, and of course they had no idea what I was talking about. After emailing one of their tech guys, they suggested I set my computer to use someone else's DNS. IMHO, this is a network neutrality violation and the FCC should be investigating this. I said that much in my thank-you letter for their ruling against Comcast.

It would not surprise me to find out that this is becoming the norm, rather than the exception.

Voice mail is probably the most important one, and it is included on cell phones; but you need to purchase it separately on landlines.

Depends on your provider; I get it for free, but I prefer an answering machine - my own private storage over my telco's thank you very much.

I don't talk much, but when you need to call (or to receive a call) it's essential - like when you need to call someone from the car and ask for directions.

When you really need to call - as in, call 911 - a landline can be a lifesaver: the number is tied to an address so help can be on it's way fast, and I have wired phone (yes, a wired phone) next to the answering machine (see above), that doesn't have to worry abut battery charge or getting lost in my jacket pocket. You're also much less likely for the service to go down in an emergency. POTS sets the bar in terms of reliability

A landline with a wired phone (pick one up at Goodwill) is a communications backup that could save your life.

Earthlink started this. My local ISP (Cavalier Telephone) has been doing this for 6 months.

Since unbundling was stuck down by the courts (forcing the FCC to change the rules--they did not want to), both DSL and cable modem prices have RISEN when you look at the actual cost to consumers. Don't look at the offers, look at the actual bills.

Take my bill for example. I have DSL service through Cavalier Telephone, a CLEC who still leases line access from Verizon. They offered DSL + phone service for $50/month, which I signed on for, and ended up paying about $60/month after fees. Now my bill is up to about $80/month, due entirely to the huge cost increase Verizon imposed on their line leases.

You will say: CavTel should build their own infrastructure. THEY DID, they have their own backbone fiber network up and down the east coast. But it's just too expensive to build out the last mile, and the government already subsidized it once. That's why unbundling was so right and so important.

Take a good look at ILEC or cable service and you will see that neither data rates nor costs have changed appreciably in the last 3 years for most customers. And why should they? There is almost no competition in broadband anywhere. The entire basis of market solutions is competition and it is almost entirely GONE in consumer broadband, leaving monopolies or duopolies.

The phone and cable companies have successfully convinced enough people that the basis for service improvement is the ease of investment. WRONG. Without competition there is no impetus for change, and therefore no impetus or need for investment. There is a glut of private capital on the world market right now. It would be comically easy for an established company like Verizon to raise huge capital to improve their service. But without competition why would they want to??? It's easier to sit still and collect the profits they are guaranteed through lack of competition.

Competition serves the consumer, not the company. Want to see what an efficient market really looks like? Look at the airline industry. Not THAT is a competitive market, and the advantages are obvious to consumers in the low prices that are available. But imagine if the government gave city-exclusives, so that only United and American were allowed to service Miami, for example. Think the prices would stay low? Not a chance. Yet it supposedly will work great for broadband.

And don't even get me started on Net neutrality, which would not even be an issue if there were greater competition.

Anyone know of any good, reliable, cheap, non-firewalled broadband in the DC Metro area?

Cavalier may fit the bill. And no, I don't work for them, though I am a customer (of both Cavtel and Verizon) and the one Verizon problem I have a year that takes 180 minutes of my time to fix is way more obnoxious than the 3 Cavtel problems I have a year that take a combined 60 minutes to fix.

Maybe instead of wasting money on cable, caller ID, x-box and cell phones (of which I have none), they could do something produtive with their time and capital and save me some tax dollars.

Like what? Poor urban areas are generally violent, so parents won't let kids out in the streets to play. Libraries and recreation facilities have closed. So parents are looking form something to occupy their kids, lest the kids turn to the less savory "entertainments" found on the streets. Given our culture, of course they'll look to consumer goods for the answer.

Secondhand TVs, video games, and PCs are cheap or even free (hand-me-downs from friends or family), or new ones can be "rented" at prices that seem appealing to the undereducated. Hell, these days they can get new ones at Wal Mart dirt cheap - maybe even made by the guys in China to whom Wal*Mart sent their old job.

And people who didn't used to be poor still have their TV, etcetera, from when they were working. Contrary to popular belief, most people on relief programs are working people who fall on hard times temporarily.

My own parents were on food stamps for a while in the early 90s. They were suburban professionals, but the first Bush recession took my father's programming job, and my mother, an R.N., was injured on the job (due to understaffing at the nursing home where she worked) and stuck in a drawn-out workman's comp suit. They didn't throw out their TV and computer.

And yes, they kept their cable service on during that period; a few extra bucks a month for entertainment to help keep your spirits up when you're going through the most difficult time in your life doesn't seem like a bad idea, or an abuse of the system you've paid into all your life.

As for cell phones, they can be obtained on a pre-paid basis, whereas landline phone service usally requires a credit check or significant security deposit. This makes cellular service a more obtainable option for many poor people.

Your beef about caller ID, I just don't get, it's a cheap add-on - in fact, though I don't use it, it's included in the base service from my CLEC.

I'd have to disagree, at least from my perspective.

I was sick of Verizon continually giving me the run--around concerning DSL in this area, changing their story on me all the time, so I sent them the letter you'll see there in the first link. I told them that if they couldn't get their story straight, they weren't going to retain my local phone business, either.

I never heard back from them.

Meanwhile, looking for new carriers... I don't need anything on my land line except for unlimited local calling. No LD, no VM, no CID, etc... none of that stuff. This said, ATT had the least expensive flat rate I could find out there, next to Verizon; others that were otherwise inexpensive only offered packages with the aforementioned nickel and dime services that couldn't be removed.

If you want an absolutely bare bones phone service for cheap, go with ATT; they're one of the few that will do that for you, and do it pretty inexpensively. If you need anything else, though, I would look somewhere else.

I'm in Maryland and I get my voice and DSL from Cavalier Telephone. 384k DSL, static IP (you can get more than one for an additional fee, I just run my server on the static one and NAT my other boxen), total cost for voice and data about $65/month including all the taxes and fees. I'm quite happy with it.

• Cavalier required me to be at home to tell a technician to cut over from my Verizon line, despite my having told them it was OK at least a dozen times over the phone
• Neither company could explain exactly what was happening with the split-bank on my line, required (at least by Verizon) for DSL. Understanding a that problem and getting it fixed added two weeks to the switchover.
• When Verizon finally claimed it had ported my old number, they didn't bother to change their routing information, leaving me with my lack of inbound service. Neither company had a way of expediting a fix ("That'll be 3 business days, sir"), or even a person or department who specifically dealt with number portability or the like.

I had local, LD, and DSL with Cavalier Telephone. I never had any serious problems with them. The only issue I ever had was getting service connected. It's actually faster to order Verizon and then call CavTel and ask them to switch. With a 12-month contract, I was paying about half what it would cost me if I were using Verizon. I don't know what their coverage area is, though....

I'm using a competitive carrier (CLEC, for those of us who've been fighting the DSL wars), and their prices are pretty good. But they're still way too expensive. I was looking at last month's bill the other day:

Service - $12
Taxes - $15
Features (CID, call waiting, etc.) - $9
Long ditance (via the CLEC, $.07/min) - $8
TOTAL: $44

Not too bad, since with Verizon/MCI I'd been paying close to $60 a month, every month.

The only downside is the inevitable problems associated with a CLEC dealing with Verizon. They even have a 768k SDSL bundle that's $75 a month, INCLUDING your full POTS service. I'm still trying to figure out whether I qualify for that. If you live in Verizon territory (I think they're in PA, MD, DC, VA, and maybe NY), check out Cavalier Telephone. Yes, they have an "independent agent" program to drum up business. No, I'm not one of those agents. :)

But to return to the subject at hand... I pay something like $15 a month (that's $180 a year!) in local, state, and federal taxes, including the "Universal Service Fund" fee, wire fees, 911/TTY taxes, etc., on my land line.

My cell phone bill, however (and here I'm still with Evil Verizon, please don't start :) ), looks more like this:

Service (for two phones on one bill) - $55
Taxes - $4

So, it's like $27 per phone, which is about $6 more than the actual services + features cost of my landline, but then again I get to take it in the car, so it's worth the 6 bucks. Plus, I get something like 300 minutes or so, decent LD costs (though I can't remember how much), and national no-romaing service.

But what's scary is the taxes and such -- only $4, or 2 bucks a phone! Why on earth should my landline taxes be so bloody expensive, and cell phones so cheap? I'm convinced that this is why so many people are moving to cell phones -- not because of the cost of service, but because of the taxes inflating the cost so much. Or at least that's my rant for this morning.

Anyway, can anyone in Europe (or Japan or Australia or any other G-7-type country) give a similar breakdown? I'm curious if we're really as screwed up as we think. (Given how much we complain about high gas costs, it's nothing compared to Europe, for example).

People have been wanting to do this.

This company has tried once and failed, but I'm sure they won't stop now.

People have been wanting to do this.

This company has tried once and failed, but I'm sure they won't stop now.

People have been wanting to do this.

This company has tried once and failed, but I'm sure they won't stop now.

• DSL
  • Verizon (Bell Scamlantic at the time) decided to use fiber from the CO to various areas then covert the Fiber to copper - this was supposed to get our area the newest technological advances faster
    Keep in mind that DSL only works over copper - So I'm F**KED
• Cable Modem
  • Comcast has promised Cable modems would be here in the next 3 months for the past 2.5 years!
  • They claim to be upgrading the cable system and did run new Cable to my area - 4 months ago!
  • This is supposed to explain all the outages we've been having
  • The latest time estimate is April but the estimate next door neighbor got was February - HMmmmmmmm....
• Satellite
  • You have to get one of their 'certified installers' install it because it transmits to a satellite
  • There aren't any dealers with 100 miles that offer this service here - AAAAARrrrrrrrrggghhh!
• WDSL
  • Wireless DSL seemed to be the salvation
  • The only provider doesn't offer service here because it requires line of sight and there are hills here
  • They also aren't providing coverage here because Comcast is getting ready to offer Cable modems - NOT!
• My Dial-Up
  • Bell won't do anything because they only have to handle 19.2K on analog POTS lines here
  • Nuke The Bastards!

For a while I've been saying that as soon as I had an alternative I'd gladly drop C & P / Bell Atlantic / Verizon, and their "We don't care. We don't have to. We're The Phone Company" attitude.

There's a CLEC in the Baltimore area, Cavalier Telephone. I was going to wait until they'd been around for a little while to make sure I wasn 't jumping from one bastard to another, but this has pushed me into making the jump. Bye bye bastards.

DSLREPORTS is an excellent web site containing all the info you want or need related to high-speed DSL and cable, specific for your zip code. DSLREPORTS has plenty of information worth sifting through that is much more meaningful than contacting most DSL "providers". You'll find Verizon is rated very low and Cavalier DSL rated very high for Virginia. All around, however, most people seem to prefer cable if it is available in their area. One possible exception is Pinole, California (near Silicon Valley where everyone hops on their @home PC when they arrive home). However, Pinole is not typical of the U.S. and as I understand it, even in Pinole, cable is addressing the oversubscriber problem and most people stiull prefer cable to DSL even in their extreme case.

Try Cavalier DSL. We had a great experience with Cavalier phone and DSL @ 768Kbits/sec up and down before Cox@home (cable) came to our area at 3.5 million bits/sec measured by http://www.speed411.com

We had DSL running fine until our DSL provider went bankrupt. We thought we'd switch to Verizon who came and checked out our line and measured great speed & quality - we're close to the Verizon station and already had DSL running sucessfully over the same line for 6 months. For many months Verizon indicated they'd hook us up any day, but as time passed, we persisted, we were eventually told our number was "not in the data base" because DSL was "impossible technically". The Verizon installer/tester and his manager said "no worry" as they'dd personnally make sure the data base was updated and that our line had no problem as all the tests were favorable for DSL. Despite their efforts, the datya base was never updated and we were eventually told it would never be updated, and not to believe the Verizon technical people (installers, teseters and their managers). As you say, one part of Verizon doesn't know what the other is doing, and worse yet they seem to have no repect for each other. This leaves the "customer in the lurch. We were even told that if the White House phone number was not in the Verison data base, even if the installer who tests the line and his manager said the line was OK, the data base could not be updated and it would be impossible for Verizon to install service to the White House. Needless to say, we figured if a company was that mixed up we would switch to another phone company, Cavalier Telephone which works fine and costs less, and use their 768kbits/sec up and down til cable came to our area. We've had Cox Cable running flawlessly in excess of 3.5 million bits/sec measured by Speed411.com, 5x faster than DSL, at a cost of $29.95/month. We note that Verizon rates very low on DSL Reports which we'd consider an excellent reference compared to a Verizon employee. Bottom line: You can believe recent press reports and our experience with 2 DSL providers and 2 cable providers that DSL is fading fast as Cable is dominating!