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Experiences with Alternate Local Phone Companies?
chasmosis asks: "In the last few months, I've moved about 25 minutes outside of St. Louis and discovered that the local baby bell charges exorbitant rates (at least in my view). I've explored alternate local carriers like Sprint and others who have had uncompetitive prices, poor customer service records, or were unclear on things like 'specifically what exchanges can I call that are still considered local calls'. Right now I'm on SBC's Metro plan where I can call to and from much of the St. Louis local area as a local call instead of a toll call. I'd dump my landline entirely and get another cell if I didn't need it for dial up internet, since I live in the sticks and there is no cable, no DSL, and the top speed for dialup is 28.8. What are other people using for alternatives to their local telephone provider? What are your experiences, good and bad?"
Just get a cellular/mobile phone. All of my friends that have tried alternate phone companies (like from the cable company) have had really hard times getting things working right. The ones that have just gone straight to mobile have been much happier.
No it isn't.
I know it's no good for the poster of this story, but for those with cable or DSL, check out Vonage. And tell them you were referred by user timandjeni - vonage@timandjeni.com ;^)
Do not read this sig.
Check out http://www.saveonphone.com. They've got a listing of some of the top alternate carriers with their basic stats listed. Many of these use the same lines as major carriers so you're not necessarily getting a lower-quality service.
...ken
Maybe of these can switch your local and long distance. I went with Total Call International due to the cheap intrastate rates...which often are more expensive than LD rates. And they bill every 6 seconds with no monthly fee. So when MCI called to earn my love back and I told 'em the rates, the rep said
"Oh...well, yeah. You got us beat."
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
...It's summer!
Not in Australia you insensitive clod!
I use Vonage as my non-cell phone. However this is because I do have a Cable modem connection. So this is no help to you.
If you can live with the Cell phone for phone service, you might want to look to DirectWay, or StarBand (or others) to provide Internet service. Response times might not be as fast as dialup, but even with fair use caps, you will probably get better data rates than dialup.
Good luck.
-Rusty
You never know...
Is the huge calling area. I can call large chunks of DC, Virginia and Maryland for free. Guess it pays to have so many lawmakers living within those zones.
I'd get the cell for all the voice calls and just keep a very cheap, basic landline service with no long distance plan just for your internet access (assuming your ISP is a local call).
Mcleod is available throughout much of the midwest and doesn't completely suck. I've been with them for about two and a half years now and haven't had any major problems with 'em. They offer all the same services as Ameritech/SBC/whatever and cost a little less. And local calls are just that, local no extra charge. I'd never even heard of "local toll calls" before reading this article.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
and the largest bell 'competitor' around here is birch telecom. they compete on price and service, but afaik still use sbc's line facilities. due to anti-monopoly laws, they're forced to allow this.
i've never used their residential service but i know of some small businesses that use them and were pleased with the service.
..they are friendly, flexible and bastards all rolled into one.
I know it's just resold starband or something, but i know a couple friends with earthlink's satellite service. They like it pretty much; as long as you can get around poor customer support, usb modem (w/o linux drivers), high setup cost (around $550 here), and the possibility of them dropping the service altogether(high likelyhood?)
I believe they're getting around 256k-400k speeds up and down
I use my cell exclusively for voice. So when I needed static IPs for my servers, and thusly DSL, I called up the good 'ol local monopoly, er, I mean, phone provider here in nyc - Verizon - and it was a whopping $19 for me to just have a line. I told the Verizon lady, no caller id, no long distance, no nothing - there will never be a phone hoooked up to it.
Turns out, the Verizon charge is about $9 and the other $10 are taxes. But still, it's a rip. That means if every citizen in nyc has a land line, there's gonna be at least $100,000,000 in tax revenue. A month! How about a tax break on that?
Talk America gives us good service. We pay 50 bucks / month for unlimited local and long distance (within SE Michigan). It's cheap to call my Mum in the UK. The only problem we have is that ameritech used to 'pulse' the dialtone to tell us we had voicemail.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Check out the "Vision" service from Sprint. It's an extra $10 a month for unlimited usage. There is a USB data cable which lets your sprint phone (I have a Sanyo 4900) work as a USB modem - and yes, it works with Linux. The Sprint Vision service gives you a digital connection at about 56k.
They don't advertise it any more and they don't sell the cable any more. Check ebay for the cable and make sure you have a compatible phone.
Here's a HOWTO for it.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
I don't know if t-mobile is available out there, but I heard they now offer a $20 unlimited data option, so you could use your cell phone for internet access.
I just baught a Sayno 9700 from Sprint, with a 45 dollar unlimited nights and weekends/300 anytimes/unlimited vision.
Now the cool thing about this phone is that you can hook it up to your linux box using a USB cable (search on google.. i got the gogamic cable), and you can have a broad band connection via your phone. It's great, I get about 15-50 Kbps now. It sure beats dialup, the speed is fast, but what's bad is the latency, I get over 400-600 ms latency (due to the obvious reasons).
Maybe you should try it, I'm close to the St.Louis area too (in illinois).
Mind you the through-put is about 1b/s.
Good luck Kimosabi!
Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
"25 minutes out of St. Louis", and yet you're in "the sticks"?
I know its not great, but it is better than dial-up in the booneys, I know. But depending on your dial up provider it can be about the same cost as the phone line bill + the internet service bill.
Just a thought.
There are a few basic kinds of CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers).
1 - Local Facilities based: The CLEC has an independent CO (switch site) in the local area and can either extend facilities to you (not likely unless you are buying 2-4 DS1s+ of service) or extend POTS/DSL/DS1 service via copper loops from the closest LEC (local exchange carrier - the old baby bell) exchange.
2 - Non-Local Facilities Based: The CLEC's switch is located somewhere else and simply trunked into the area. They CLEC may or may not have direct colocation in the LEC's COs.
3 - Reseller: The CLEC just takes your order and passes it to the LEC to fulfill. Its still the LECs lines, switch, numbers, etc.
There are also myriad variations on the above. In general if you can get service from a local facilities based CLEC go for it. Most of them aren't really setup for residential (not profitable), but you may get lucky in your area.
Well I'm 45 miles outside of St. Louis so I have a similar issue (yep I drive in every day). We use the local phone company only for having minimal connection to the wired world if necessary. Most of my phone time is spent on my cell phone while in St. Louis (my cell wont even work where I live ). For Internet access I am using Starband with WinProxy as the gateway for my home network of ten PCs (yep our family has LAN gaming parties every once in a while).
... the nearest Walmart is over 20 miles away.)
This is far from an ideal setup, but is all that is available. It is the small price that I pay for being able to live on my own littel piece of paradise away from the noise and congestion of civilization
Good luck. If you get cell service okay where you live, I would just go with that and a satelite connection.
Company uses a couple PRI's from AT&T for local phone service. They provide the service, but the local loop still belongs to SBC. We got a pretty good rate due to our volume. Install support when we switched over was incompetent to say the least, but no problems since then.
No matter who you use, they'll still end up reselling the local loop from the baby bell. Only exceptions I know are if you get phone service over digital cable TV or VoIP like Vonage.
I live in the NW Burbs of Chicago and recently switched from SBC to ComCast when I moved. I have ComCast for cable-modem and cable-TV so I thought having them for phone would be good as well.
However, they have been very expensive. It is a toll call to call just about anywhere and they charge up to $0.07 per minute for what used to be a local call under SBC. Furthermore, they require that you buy callpacks in minutes rather than flat pricing per call and they charge enough for the by-the-minute callpack that you have to use all your minutes before you save.
Customer service is rude and they charge you $5 to change any item on your plan.
Last month my phone bill was almost $70 and I didn't make a single call that wouldn't have been local on my old SBC plan that costs about $35 a month.
Anyhow, I am thinking about switching to "The Neighborhood" by MCI. Supposed $49.95 a month plus some taxes but no surprises and unlimited local and unlimited (US-only) long distance.
use your cellphone unless you talk as much as a girl & have to have a landline.
I know some folks are lazy on here, but is the comment really too big to read fully?
I'd dump my landline entirely and get another cell if I didn't need it for dial up internet, since I live in the sticks and there is no cable, no DSL, and the top speed for dialup is 28.8.
Too late for you, but checking into all aspects of a new area are part of my moving process.
Broadband important? Choose a neighborhood that is supported by broadband. Don't move to where there is none, and then bitch about it.
Local phone service not up to par? Well...that's another decision point in the move.
"I've moved....and discovered..." does not count.
If it is important to you, find thse things out before you move.
for the past couple years, i've been using rcn rather than sbc/pacbell for my local dialtone (650 area code). during that time, i've been paying a "local number portability fee" to -er- somebody. i recently moved about seven blocks. rcn doesn't provide service at my new location so i switched to att. could i move my phone number? ha!
to continue my subject line: unfortunately, the incumbent phone company (sbc/pacbell) is even worse and will never get me back as a directly-paying customer...
REPORT ALL OBSCENE MESSAGES TO YOUR POTSMASTER
They are small, only in Calif and Minn. but there service is fully fiber to the house, they offer phone, cable, and TV at SUBSTANTIALLY LOWER prices than COMCRAP and they offer a better selection of channels. The only downside is the phone is not self powered like the old landline princess phones on a ma-bell connection. So when the power goes out, your phone is out as well :(
but I've got a cell for emergencies like that.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I agree that prices out here suck! However, with a friend working in SBC, I have to give his why on why they charge so much.
The government is allowing others to taxi off of SBC's line to be "competitive". They tell SBC what they can charge these people for while these other companies are using their lines to make money. However, SBC owns the lines and when maintance comes around they have to go out and incur the costs of fixing it when it's not even theirs.
So, they charge extra where they can. Also, the same goes for DSL. Even with Charter as their competitor SBC has to share their DSL with third parties but Charter doesn't have to share their cable. That's why they've slowed down on the roll out of DSL. The more they roll out, the more they get penalized by having to share it.
So, in retrospect, if SBC rolls out lines (tele or internet) then they have to share it with others who didn't have to pay the cost of rolling it out or the cost of maintance.
However, charter doesn't and yet SBC is trying to stay competitive with them.
I know exactly where you're coming from as I'm in almost the identical circumstances. Currently I just eat the cost of the metro-type calling solution and use landline for dial-up IP.
However, some friends have looked at this solution. I've not had a chance to look at it much yet. This company provides internet service from cellular towers in your area. They claim (I believe), that if you can use a cell phone from home, then you can use their stuff for your internet access.
Anyway, here's the URL: http://www.convergenow.net
I'd be really curious if any other slashdotters have had success with these folks or similar ones.
Cadmann
+++++++++ there internet speeds are reasonable
Another option is an idea for a grass-roots company to bring high-speed to the last mile...
good luck.
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
> the top speed for dialup is 28.8
That's just wrong. Wrong in so many ways.
I have Knology Phone/Cable/Cable Modem Internet service and it is pretty good. The pipe the phone calls in over TV Cable. Not really sure how it works. They put this box outside the house and run wires out of it into the main phone line box. No special phones or anything like that. I get all 3 for a price of around $100/month.
Zoid.com
Hi!
What may be a very good option for you to consider is improving your Internet connectivity and then exploring VOIP (Voice Over IP). DirecTV has a satellite data arm called DirecWay that offers two-way broadband via satellite dish. (We have considered it, but only as a fallback to our existing circuit.)
Once you have the broadband, look at VOIP...
Once you have broadband, you might want to look at VOIP, especially Vonage. They will assign you a number and provide "local" calling service to every exchange in your "home" area code(s). VOIP quality is improving, and there are more and more people in the newsgroups providing helpful advice.
Is this the BEST solution?
Your mileage may vary. This is certainly a cutting edge solution--and, as the old adage goes, it may be hard to stay on the cutting edge without bleeding. If you're looking for better bandwidth anyway, it's worth taking a look at.
As much as a girl?
I've recent switched to Excel for all my calls.
I pay about $50 a month or so (I think closer to $60 after taxes) for unlimited long distance and local calls, plus caller id, call waiting, forwarding and several other options that I don't even use.
Service has been good. Billing has been accurate and on time. I don't have any complaints at all. Particularly since I'm no longer being forceably FDA'd by SBC anymore.
I can't find the url for the offer I have. However, if you drop an email to deech "at" free "dash" source "dot" com, I'll be happy to send you the phone number from my flier.
(quotes are punctuation discriptions, not text)
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
1) Grab about 500 some odd miles of that super industrial NASA engineered cable from below /. article.
2) Send one of the cable ends via Fed Ex to me in Milwaukee.
3) Pull tight on the cable till it feels snug (may have some extra milage on the exact cable amount).
4) Now connect your end to the bottom of a steel trash can where you are (someplace outside of St. Louis).
5)I'll do the same up here.
6)Place your noggin in the trash can and start talking.
7)Success! Now do the same with all your other friends.
Such as one of AT&T's older one's allows unlimited EVERYTHING for $100/month. As long as you don't use the net on your phone.
It sounds like a lot, but if you split the phone amongst two people, and have lots of friends across the country, it's a good deal.
Vonal Declosion
And get a card like this for your laptop/desktop.
Sierra Wireless Aircard 555
You should check out whether your cable company offers digital phone service. Cox Communications does in many locations, and they claim to have similiar uptime to regular phone service, but much cheaper prices.
I would have gone with them when I moved to California, but at the time they didn't have the service available in my neighborhood. I'm still hoping to check them out sometime.
These people knocked my socks off. I called them up on a Friday asking for DSL for my company's office, there. Surprisingly, we were within range and everything looked like it was going to come off great. Then she dropped the bomb on me:
"Now, you understand that this may not be ready until Tuesday, right?"
Tuesday?! That's only 2 business days for DSL! Believe it! It doesn't have to be 2 months!
I've been using one for about six months. $50/month with unlimited long distance (and about $5 for the line charge to the CLEC). NOTE: I also shill for the service. Click link for details. Yes, it will hit you with some MLM info. But just click on the 'local phone service' button.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
A friend of mine got rid of his land line, but there was a fairly serious (for him) consequence he didn't plan on. The local pizza places don't deliver to cell phones.
$50 a month for unlimited local and long distance; call waiting, caller ID including on call waiting, call forwarding, and some other feature. I like using my landline because even if I use my cordless, my head doesn't hurt after using the phone, unlike with my mobile phone. And just the satisfaction in knowing that my money is in no way going to SBC's profits brings a smile to my face. I look forward to telephone service via Comcast Cable next year. The Baby Bells are as good as dead...and not in a Whedon-esque version of *dead* either...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
why do you live in a place where you can't get high-speed access?
I recently bought a Sony Ericcson ti-68 from amazon. It was free after rebates, and it is bluetooth enabled. T-Mobile has an internet service plan that is about $20 for unlimited access, I think. Pair the phone with a blue tooth enabled computer and you get about a 56K connection. I tried it while on vacation, and it worked great with my 12" PowerBook. I don't know if this is feasible with Linux or Windows, but you might look into it.
how about a fine southern bell. :)
I have the Sanyo 4900 and I got the cable at Radio Shack for $20. It didn't come with the software, but they don't have any software for Mac OS X so I didn't care. Mac OS X does have built-in drivers for the phone so I was set.
$10 a month for unlimited data is great. For a while it was our primary Internet connection, now we've got a cable modem. No additional charges (we were on a lot) and >56k speeds. This is our only phone and it's been great.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
Assumming you do not need an untra fast PING you can allways go for DirectWay.... I am not sure if it is suitable for Voice over IP.. But it is a lot better than a 28.8 dialup.
http://www.englishfirst.org
Stay with your cell phone for regular calls. If you have a cband system or can get your hands on a cheap one go with cband.net for internet. However, you do need a land line for handshaking and out going data. I've been using CBand since the begining of the year and am *very* pleased with it. 40+K/Bs vs 26.4 kb/s with the dial up.
I use Comcast Digital Telephone Service through the cable for local and long distance. Haven't had any issues with the service and I've even changed the set up a few times without any problems. Anything is better than Michigan Bell/Ameritech/SBC
Verizon customer service just plain sucks. When they were GTE it was fine, but now it's just Evil. Don't go there.
This sig no verb.
I live in the Kansas City area, and we are pretty much all SWB here. However, there is one alternative called Everest. Let me tell you, these guys rock. They are extremely cheap, and the offer phone, internet, and cable. I pay less than $100 a month, have all the channels I want, a phone line, and cable internet. It doesn't get any better!!
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
A while back, when we moved into the apartment before the one we're in now, we decided to give MCI a chance. The price was good, the calling was good--but it was 9 weeks before the phone was installed. When we moved apartments into the one we're in now, it was going to be another 4-12 weeks to get the phone service transfered. (We called Verizon, and got it done the same day.)
Unless you have to share your phone line with another person, or need it to connect to an ISP, my suggestoin is to skip the land line and get a cell phone. My friends who have cells are _easier_ to get ahold of than those with land lines, and activation / transfer takes hours or days, not weeks or months.
This is going to be month two on Vonage for me (voip phone service through a cable modem) and its a good service but...
1. They have significant voicemail problems. I think the consensus at dslreport's voip forums is that they are overselling/pushing their VM system too hard or they just expanded too quickly. Its not just lost VM but sometimes my phone wont ring when VM is enabled. Workaround: use a plain-jane answering machine. Afterall, you get a normal POTS phone jack from the Cisco ATA they send you.
2. Be mindful of you upload speed and what apps you're running on your home lan. You don't want to use this when kazaa or whatever is maxing out your upload cap. Throttle bandwidth to leave yourself 100kbs. Vonage also has a 30kbs compressed codec for people without much bandwidth.
3. Of course, if you lose network connectivity (or power for that matter) you lose phone. That probably isn't much of a concern in a world of cell phones, but its something to consider if you don't have a cell phone and are far from your neighbors.
The pros
1. It sounds excellent. Its POTS quality as far as I can tell. Think of it as MP3 compared to CD.
2. If you're already paying for broadband its a smart investment. Telling the local monopoly to piss off is very gratifying. Not to mention you have built in number portability. Just plug that Cisco ATA anywhere and you have your old phone number.
3. The geek quotient of using VoIP without the other party know or asking, "What are you calling me on, a damn tin can?"
Sorry about the redundant question. Is it Linux friendly? Sounds interesting enough.
Quack, quack.
I won't comment on the phone, but being a dialup user myself I know how much it can suck. And if the best I could do was 28.8 you better believe I'd have a satellite dish on the roof. Jeez, why even bother at that speed?
Since youre on dialup anyways, why dont you checkout TMobile that offers unlimited GPRS data internet access for only $19.99 in addition to your cell service. If you get good reception with TMobile where you live, youd be able to get 36.6K to 56K speeds with GPRS. Just get a bluetooth usb dongle for your PC and Nokia 3650 phone(often free with 1 year contract) and use phone as a modem and Tmobile GPRS as ISP.....
Here's a bit of trivia that most people don't know about alternate local phone carriers (LEC Local Exchange Carrier identified by OCN Operating Company Number).
LECs are divided into three tiers: A, B, and C. Most ex-Bell carriers are tier A; most third-party carriers (for example, Cox) are tier C. Frontier, GTE, and Sprint (local) are tier B. I believe that cellphone carriers mostly qualify as tier C, but I'm not sure.
Long distance calls, especially in-state but also interstate long distance, cost the LD carrier a lot more if they originate and/or terminate at tier B or C. A-A calls, for example, might cost the carrier 2c/minute; C-C calls can cost 10c!
Some LD carriers pass these costs directly to the user; others refuse to provide service to tier C users. Many LD companies are considering charging customers different rates depending on the originating and terminating LEC.
Don't be surprised if at some point in the future it costs you more to call a cellphone or a (Joe's local telco) customer long distance.
Any of the "local" providers that advertise on TV that will "get you connected for $XX.95" are no good if you ever want to get a car loan or mortgage.
A friend recently got a car loan and they asked for her home phone number and she said she just had a cell, and they said that for any loan company to approve a loan, you need to have a home phone provided by a major telephone company. (They specifically mentioned SBC, Verizon or Sprint) I suppose this is because people would get a phone line with the no name companies, get their loan and cancel and then default on the loan and get a new number. If you use a major phone company I think they can hunt you down easier or something.
St. Louis is home to several Wireless (wi-fi) Internet Service Providers (WISP) that offer SDSL type speeds or better for amoun the same or less money per month. Some have committed rates of 128k with unlimited burst of 384 and up.
I work for one of these competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs for short). We offer service under a couple different names depending on if you want pre-paid or post-paid service (and how good your credit is). It's tough to compete but we try to offer good rates and packages to our customers. Depending on the area, some of the plans are pretty good. Other areas it's just impossible to compete much so our plans are not very competitive or we just don't offer service there. As far as the quality of service, it's still the big companies (mostly baby bells) that control the facilities so there is little we can do to improve over any existing conditions in a particular area.
I work do some work for a southern Illinois based CLEC http://www.gettelco.com that is offering services in the metro east. Currently we don't offer residential service, although we're working toward that goal so hopefully soon. Anyway where in the area are you? If you're on the Illinois side of the river there aren't many options yet. I do believe Mcleod does offer some services in the area, but there just aren't many alternatives yet. Both SBC and Verizon if you go a little farther south in Illinois really ream you for intralata calls.
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it." -Voltaire
Poke arround the main site. there is some info there about starting your own WISP and selling service to your neighbors.
I've heard mixed reports about using Vonage and satelite ISP. YMMV.
Good Luck.
- Infiniplex (NetLogic)
- O2 Connect
There were a couple of other attempts around St. Charles, but I think they evaporated.I live in St. Louis too. I don't know where you moved from, but the phone rates here are actually very good for a city of this size. Keep in mind that if you're only 25 minutes away, you're still well within the metropolitan area. It takes me 20 minutes to get to the city proper, and I'm smack in the middle of suburbia.
I do agree that the phone companies aren't much help with defining "local". They seem to define it by location instead of exchange, so I never know what's local until I see the bill.
This plan seems interesting. It says $29.99/mo for unlimited access, but curiously lists $0.20/minute for calls. T-Mobile uses GSM, which means this data connection is probably provided via GPRS, so it's not technically using a call to do so. (Sidenote: I know from experience that unless you specifically have GPRS added to your plan, T-Mobile will handle Internet access as a phone call, charging you minutes. Thus, while Internet access on a GSM line seems like it would always be GPRS, this isn't the case.) At any rate, it's not totally clear what all this plan offers. It would be nice to know if they would add this on to a standard phone plan of theirs so you don't have to pay for minutes.
Don't assume they'll do this unless you ask. They can be pretty goofy about the plans they'll let you set up. Good luck!
Since the only reason you're keeping your landline is for Internet access, what about satellite dish services? That doesn't require you to have any wire infrastructure; you just buy the dish from like Radio Shack and concrete it on the ground or stick it on the roof. Then you can get your nicer mobile phone service and high-speed Internet access.
I don't know of any Internet dish services off the top of my head though.
At least you don't live in Mexico. The only telephone company here sucks, the service sucks, the prices sucks. Examples (prices converted to us dlls): You can make up to 100 LOCAL calls for about 19 dlls (month), extra calls 18 cents each, long distance about 50 cents by minute, call to any "local" cell phone 29 cents. . . ahhhhh, their internet services: 256k ADSL 60dlls month with 3 year contract; special fees for decline contract.
Bastards!
Although MCI is one of my clients, I pretty much have no problem being critical of their services when I need to. (I certainly don't have a problem switching between any carrier to find a better rate or service.)
About a year ago, I changed over to their combined local telephone service + long distance service called "The Neighborhood". Meaning, there is no longer a bill from a local telephone company. And there is no longer a bill from a long distance carrier. The Neighborhood provides both.
It is a flat-rate service for residential use for calling within the US. Meaning, make as many calls as you want, local or long distance, for as long as you want. At the end of the month, you get an itemized phone bill. It contains the flat-rate fee (approx $70 with all the charges added up for me) and lists each and every long distance call placed, and at $0.00.
For me it is several pages. And what is interesting is that when I add up all of the minutes, the end result averages to be as if I paid $0.02 per minute for long distance, and got my local telephone service for free.
Other features are thrown in. Voice mail. Three way. Speed dial. Caller ID. Call waiting. Call waiting Caller ID. Probably some other things I forget.
I had one outage that affected me and the entire residential area around me. It was fixed right along with everyone else.
Anyhow, I'm pleased. I was paying as much as SBC charged for local service + caller id + metro plan. Now I get that much, more, and unlimited long distance. My variable rate phone bills have disappeared.
I have not had any trouble with them and I get 3 cents per min long distance withthem along with no local toll and as many features as I like for free!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Starpower (RCN) they offer a full package of cable, phone, and cable modem. If you take the shop-around price of each of those components, they offer the phone service for 20% less then Verizon in this area (Washington, DC)
They have provided exceptional service so far. I have had one phone outage which they fixed as quickly as verizon/bell atlantic ever had, and they were better able to diagnose their network (ie. didn't need to come into my home and make me wait there for several hours while they mucked around) to fix the problem.
Cablewise, with this package they give you "megamodem" service, I have seen sustained downloads over 400Kbps - not all the time, but occasionally - still can't rec. them entirely as some ports are blocked and you need to work around them. On the other hand, they don't try to cut you off for making use of those workarounds - they seem interested only in inhibiting the casual user.
now offering hdtv service with the phone package at no additional charge, we'll see how they do.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...
Don't take it personally, nerdy girls are just like one of the guys, you're not like those girly girls that we couldn't talk to even if we wanted to. We know they talk too much cause every time we call they tell us they gotta go cause they have another call coming in.
But hey, I completely understand that not everyone is as socially deprived as I am. I verified not only the distance to the CO, but how their feature set compared to the CO in the neighborhood from which I was moving. Not that I understand what a CO being an "OC12 capable wire center" truly means, but anything mentioning OC12 has to be cool, right? ;-)
I live in the NE burbs of Chicago and I have also switched over to MCI and figured out that the right plan is the above-mentioned MCI "The Neighborhood" plan at about $50 plus maybe $15 taxes. Includes local, unlimited US long distance, voicemail. Previously I was paying SBC about the same amount before any long distance charges. So far the MCI service seems pretty much OK. (Quaintly, some of the customer service people weren't initially familiar with our having to dial area codes for (all) calls here.) Presumably, the recent SBC attempt to surrepticiously get the line lease rates jacked up is dead for now even though SBC are appealing the judicial knockdown, and MCI will continue to offer the plan. PS I use Comcast for internet, if the local phone lines were good enough and a decent price I would try to switch to DSL.
Not sure how far out in the sticks you are, but my parents live in O'Fallon and have fixed wireless through Infiniplex (786Kbps/786Kbps for ~$100/month, if memory serves).
Might take care of the dial-up problem...
I use the same thing from voicepulse, now i pay $27 for unlimited usage of my phone line.
http://www.voicepulse.com/
Add up all the "number portability" fees from the months you paid them. Estimate if if you don't have the bills. Write up an official very professional looking invoice to RCN, and address it to Accounts Payable. List the item as "overcharge on number portability fee."
Only after they don't pay it, complain to the State AG. There is actually a good chance you will get a check.
I work with dozens of ILECs like the ones you describe, and part of my job involvs finding out what exchanges/cities their Extended Area Service, or Local Calling Area, covers.
Telephone companies are typically required by their state Public Utilities Commission to publish tariffs that indicate, among other things, what areas you can call "locally", that is, without paying a toll to an intraLATA or interLATA carrier. Additionally, the telephone company is typically required to give this information out to the public during business hours.
You should call the companies you are considering and ask what their "EAS Calling Area" is for the area in which you live. If they claim ignorance, simply mention that you could call the state PUC and ask them for assistance, but that the phone company would much rather help you directly. They can receive stiff penalties for not handling such public information inquiries directly!
I hope this helps.
I live in Falls Church, VA. I have used two non-Bell phone companies, both of them because of bundled internet service. The first was Cavalier. Internet service was DSL. Very nice. Static IP, very reasonable TOS. Advertised data rate: 256 synchronous. Actual data rate: closer to 512. Phone service: horrible. They were a small company who clearly didn't have procedures down, and my wife finally made me dump them. We then went to StarPower. Internet service is cable. 512 = Data rate 1.5M. TOS bad, DHCP, incoming port 80 blocked. Phone service: OK so far.
Tard
I use SWBell for local calls only and my sprint cell phone for everything else.
The prices our outrageous and there are no competitors in my area.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
That is all I have and the rate is only $.03/min if you purchase in 500-minute blocks.
/min.
No monthly fee, no credit card, no taxes. Just $.03
You can by a blue-tooth phone from t-mobile, and a blue-tooth adaptor for your computer, and surf on that. They offer unlimited data plans now for $20/month. It works well, I recommend sony ericson phones, I have the P800. I'm not 100% sure on the speed, I only use it when I have laptop and am away from home/wi-fi access point.
In New Zealand there's one choice, NZ Telecom. I there's one other long distance service that my wife set up a while back, but they were no cheaper. Guess my kharma can't get much worse here, so I may as well just say it. Americans are spoiled and whine about stupid things. Just get over it, mate and consider yourself lucky you even have a choice.
Why be a sucker and pay for some limp-weiners alimony and mid-life crises? Member-Owned Cooperative, Yeah baby!
Weird News
My DSL experience has thus far trounced my cable experience soundly.
My current Cox cable barely gives me 3-400kpbs download speeds (based on driver and iso downloads), whereas my ex-DSL provider (Ameritech) gave me a solid 700-800kbps down. Online gaming pings are roughly equivalent. I can't explain the difference, because the costs are very comparable.
My DSL provider also didn't have a problem with me running servers, and the service was greater than 99% available... outages counted on one hand, and never more than a few hours in length.
Now don't get me wrong... dealing with Ameritech can be like a root canal sans anethesia (3 tries to get the installation right), but once it was set up, it ran like a champ.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I use my cellphone for any and all calls I make. It's $10 more per month, and since I get unlimited evenings/weekends, I just get long-distance people to call me instead, and all is well. Plus, I can take it with me, I can turn it off whenever I want, and I get voicemail too. Funny thing is, a local land line with voicemail would cost about the same. Go figure.
--Dan
revealed these guys (http://www.networkstl.com/whatisit.htm). They claim nationwide availablity, althought the monthly fee of $99 is somewhat high. It all depends on how much your internet is worth, i suppose.
:)
Shouts out to a fellow Stl'er by the way
I can't believe people will post this kind of pure bullshit.
I got hit hard when I found out that CA had not only inter-LATA charges, but INTRA-LATA charges.. basically toll charges within a given area. Then I found out that Costco offered toll phone service.
Costco will give you any needed local or long distance charges through their provider. The company is MCI, but you are getting it as if you were going to provide it to other people rather than end user MCI service. You're getting what the phone companies buy.
5 cents a minute, no monthly fees, and you are billed on 6ths of a second. My SO and I got tired of times when the bill was lower than the cost of a stamp so we sent them a moderate size check and haven't heard from them since.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
...although their services may not be what you need.
I was running a small business which did about 10,000 minutes a month on its 800 number and had relatively modest data requirements. They split a T-1 (half voice lines, half data) and gave me a good price for three services (local phone, data and long-distance). The quality was far superior to what we had been getting from our Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) provider (Qwest).
If they offer what you need in your area, I would definitely recommend checking them out.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I live just across the river from St. Louis. Fortunantly we have Charter cable, so we are able to get broadband. I'm assuming that you live in the ShowMe State and not the Land of Lincoln. For whatever reason, it seems that they are much slower rolling out broadband on that side of the river. In recent months there has been a couple of companies start up that are offering wireless broadband. As far as phone companies, we have Ameritech. I use my cell phone (Cingular) for all my long distance calls since I have free LD. Plus, most of MO and Southern IL are covered as local calls with Cingular.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Full T1 from Birch is only $390/mo. (free router, free install, block of statics). Split a channel or two off for voice, sell some bandwidth to your neighbors. Voi la...in the end (assuming you have a few interested neighbors) costs no more than local phone service (or less....pays for itself). Just be sure to throttle your neighbors data access. Of course if by "20 minutes outside of St. Louis" you mean in Illinois, well, your screwed. IL (where I used to live) is telco and broadboand no-mans land with high rates and terrible service.
This kinda fits in with the topic at hand, but I'd like to hear some experiences with alternate ISPs. Currently, DSL is not available where I am and I have a dialup account with the West Coast node of the S-Borg-Collective, formerly known as Pacific Bell. However, SBC just completed a huge revamp on their local CO, so I may now have some hope for DSL. However, I want to give SBC the finger since their DSL plans seem a ripoff, and go with somebody like Speakeasy, who has much more lax restrictions on my bandwidth usage. But I'd like to hear if anybody has had any trouble with getting installation, service, etc. from a provider who isn't the phone company running the CO. Also, has anyone had any problems dealing with the phone company itself afterwards, assuming you kept them for voice service? Thanks.
I had the same cable from Radio Shack, but this cable does not recharge while you are online, so after 3-4 hours you have to recharge your phone.
I searched on the net and found this cable that does recharge while you are on the net too, it's 15 bucks. I got the cable and returned by Radio Shack cable.
And the good part is that the cable came with a small size cd that had the required software for windows (and also PIM updating tools for the phone), but I never tried this out, cause I use my phone only in Linux.
And for the troll who posted that this is getting charged (I see you guys on sprintusers all the time), no.. there is no charge. It's unlimited =)
What I find odd is that this sort of question can evoke a volcanic response. This ought to say something about the free market system, but that's a very complicated topic.
Sad, sad sad.
or other toll-free number. I would have switched if they could.
I'm in a Verizon state (Delaware) but my local line is through Cavalier Telephone for a few years now (http://cavaliertelephone.com). It's a little cheaper than Verizon, and no problems so far. LD is PNG (a Qwest reseller), I get an 888 number free at the same per-minute rate.
www.onesuite.com no monthly fee, rates as low as 2.5c/minute.
dont get mcleod if you want to run your own server. they shut me down for having 3 open ports for telnet, smtp, and webhosting
I used Telebright to figure out what was the cheapest provider for me (it turns out the cheapest provider was Power Net Global). Telebright is on the up-and-up and Consumer Reports actually forwarded me to that site (Consumer Reports strives to be as vendor-indifferent as possible). You type in your calling patterns (e.g. 600 minutes/month evening 200 minutes/month daytime) and they'll tell you what the cheapest plan is (from MCI, AT&T, Sprint, and other providers). Telebright makes their money by actually hooking you up with the LD provider (the LD provider pays the fee). Of course you can bypass them if you want to and sign up directly, but it doesn't save you any money. --Brian
Although I am not quite in the same boat as the poster, the following combo works out pretty well for me.
v combo I could come up with. $150, flat, no long distance charges, etc. I know a lot of people who pay $150 alone for their landline or cell phone bills alone. Other than rent, food, and auto-related stuff, that is the extent of my fixed monthly expenses.
Just for reference, I live in northern San Diego county, California. I can not get DSL (too far from C.O.) nor can I get fixed-point wireless (we tried, but there are trees in the way and my H.O.A. sort of owns the trees). I run a business from my home. The services I use serve me for both personal and business use.
I have cablemodem service with Cox. It rocks. The downstream is awesome. At night it has sometimes even beat the supposed 3mb maximum that the cable company claims.
I can get an analog phone line from PacBell or a hybrid phone line from the cable company, where they put a box similar to a cablemodem at my junction (demarcation) point. I don't have either.
I have $39 service with Vonage, as many other posters do. At least with my net service, it is awesome. Sounds about as good as a land-line and has every feature you could ever want included in the base price... Unlimited LD, caller id, callwaiting, callwaiting id, voicemail, incredible forwarding options, etc.
I have a cell phone from Sprint. Sprint isn't the best company around, but the damn thing works and is priced right. I have more minutes than I could ever dream of using and for like $14 a month I put my mom's handset on my account. Soak up those extra minutes! When I get around to buying a new phone I will be able to use their 64-144k service.
Lastly I have a J2 fax mailbox. It gives me send and receive fax capabilities without paper cuts, a fax machine, or even an analog modem. It just works. About $10 a month.
I keep the vonage number on no-answer forward to my cell and everything eventually dumps into my voicemail.
This entire combo runs me about $150 a month for basically the ultimage telephone/pager/cell/internet/fax/voicemail/cable
The Neighborhood is available in Seattle area for about $40/mo + taxes. All local and long distance calls (in the United States) are included in the price... all you can eat.
Only on Slashdot.
Laws are for people with no friends.
As you can probably tell from my URL, my ISP is CoreComm. They are also my telco (I'm too far away from the CO for "real" DSL), as I still have dialup. They have been my telco/ISP for three years now, and my monthly charges are still about $15 a month less than what I was paying for Sum Bitchin' Communications (aka SBC) and Prodigy at the time.
The service from CoreComm has been pretty good (one day of outage over the past three years); a while back they added a spam filtering service that does a good job of catching spam and redirecting it out of my inbox. If you are looking for a new telco and they serve your area, you might check them out.
My biggest problem has been with MCI Worldcom, which was my former long distance carrier. Those assholes kept trying to bill me for service I did not have with them; as late as last summer they were trying to bill me for monthly service, even though CoreComm is my long distance company. After screaming at a couple of customer service reps, they finally closed my account. If financial shenanigans don't sink MCI Worldcom, bad service will.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
I live in Hamilton, NJ (Mercer County).
I've got digital cable (with high-def programming), movies on-demand, high-speed internet. I get 10 Mbps down 1Mbps up consistently. (Cablevision's Lightpath service is their SONET backbone.) What DSL even gets close to those speeds? OK, the speeds aren't guarenteed...but then I never paid for an SLA. I use a Cisco NAT firewall and Cisco wireless access point with cablevision's blessing. I spend about $90.00/mo. total.
They just started offering phone service...I might try it and drop the $80.00/mo. I give to Verizon.
-ted
If your anywhere near Troy then try alwayson-line.net. They have a great wireless high speed plan that won't break the bank.
I've been using this service for months, works great. More features than the local companies offer is another great benefit.
www.vonage.com
I've been using a CLEC, Cavalier Telecom, for my home phone for over a year now. Quite happy with it, just signed up for their DSL service and so far so good. The service has been good, but the best thing it simply that they're not Verizon...
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What are peoples' experiences with local alternative POTS(land-line) carriers?
I've had a nightmare overbilling experience with SBC, and as a result, I'm forced to use Verizon wireless for my "home" phone and HotSpot for my broadband.
What I'd like to know, is there any place that is aggregating this information, in a similar fashion as dslreports.com dslreports.com but for POTS? National would be of obvious use, but I'd settle for any information in the L.A. area.
- learn to swim.
Compare that to the cost of dialup and a baby-bell landline and it's a no brainer. Not to mention that you can take it with you on the road. Users in my area report speeds similar to 56k dialup.
Won't do our original correspondent much good, but in some parts of the KC area we have a service called "Everest Connections" that I've had good luck with. Everest pulls a double strand of coax to the house, and I tell SBC and Time-Warner to get stuffed.
With number portability I moved my two phone lines over to Everest; I signed up for a cable TV package with all the same channels that I ever watch; and while I didn't have RoadRunner, I now have Everest TrailBlazer. And I'm spending less than I did for SBC and T-W.
I've had no complaints with the service, it's always at least as good as whatever I got from SBC and T-W.
Alas, their parent company is struggling financially, and they've suspended any additional service rollouts. When the economy gets stronger, they hope to return to their go-go-go installation.
Everest did get some bad press for hitting gas lines laying cable. The real problem there was the gas company in that area didn't know where their own lines were located. They lost the plans in one of several corporate sales and acquisitions, so they just made their best guess and crossed their fingers -- but decided not to spend the money to have a repair crew standing by in case they were wrong. So Everest runs the cable where the gas company says it is safe, hits the cable, and the press blames Everest.
I live in the sticks and there is no cable, no DSL, and the top speed for dialup is 28.8.
Wow, I thought US was the country of future, now I see, in some places it has the worst factors: Arrogant egocentric people and no broadband.
In Aus you cannot get DSL without paying the Telstra Tax and forking out $20 a month.
We have recently ungone a revolutionary (for us!) price change (and soon to be price W A R). I realise that *most* people in this world want a landline and their DSL.. but some of us are already paying our Mobile tax.. and don't care to pay for a land line we don't use.
Yes I realise that Hell$tra ownes the copper, and can do what it likes.
and I get DSL from SBC. I don't have to pay a local access charge. I get decent rates(though they *were* better a year ago).
Here's my suggestion: Move into the 314 area. 636 and 573(unless it's over 50 miles away) get a raw deal. SBC is nazi, but they can't make any excuses if you're in 314.
I'm an Excel representative, and it is a good deal. You get "all you can eat" long distance for $50 a month plus taxes. Includes caller id, call waiting, 3-way etc.
My mom and my mother in law live in Florida and the LD charges were killing me until I switched to Excel for my own lines. Check here to see if it's available in your area. You can sign up on-line.
Not a bad business to be in these days.
I had not realized that the US was such a technological backwater. Do you realize that Japan now has 8 to 12 Mbps Net connections for residential use in Tokyo?
Is not Internet service better than this in Mexico?
Why do you not just get a satellite dish? Is there a place on the continent of North America that is not covered? I do not know what the pricing for something like that might be, but it should not be too much more than ADSL in most places (that have it, that is).
What about a cellular Internet connection? That would probably be very expensive (if, of course, it is available), but it would remain connected wherever you might be.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
Telecom == fraud.
All of them, all companies.
If you sell phone service you are an overbilling accounting scandal ridden mafia that deserves to die.
H.T.H.
P.S. This includes the LA area.
Believe it or not I am satisfied with Comcast digital phone.The sound quality is excellent and when I tested a dialup connection I get 52000(Too bad its 5 years to late). I use to have SBC and decided to try Comcast. I am now saving 25 bucks on my phone bill.
You could always dump the landline and get the cell phone. For internet you could use two way satellite.
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....
Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy. - Robert Anthony
I switched over to the The Neighborhood (www.theneighborhood.com) in January of this year. The Neighborhood is MCI/Worldcom, whatever they are calling themselves now. The big advantage here is you pay approximately $50 a month which includes your local loop fees and unlimited long distance. I've had no issues so far with the service and the bill ends up being just over $60 with all of the federal fees. It's nice to be able to rack up 1000 minutes of long distance calls and not worry about the price one bit.
Is Excel still a Multi-Level-Marketing (Network Marketing) company?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I... /.
I...
Fifteen times no less. I don't really care to read your budget on
How will you get out of the MAtrix?
Sage is not available everywhere, but you can check them out at http://www.sagetelecom.com/. They are also not the cheapest in all their markets, because of bogus municipal and county "fees" designed to prevent them being competitive. They won a big court battle with the established telecos and there's a lot of hostility. They get my vote for being 100% open and honest, as far as I can tell. They told me up front what my monthly bill would be, and it was within $1US of their estimate. Their service is the best I've tried, in spite of having to hand off work orders to SBC, who actually owns the local hardware.
Great service, rock bottom prices, huge bandwidth. Less than half the price of Bell South. Recently Time Warner Telcomm has moved into our area with local service and data service and is very competitive. We are looking into this as well, as they have a product called Versapak that let's you break your T1 between voice and data channels and allows you to use all unused voice channels for data when they are not being used.
Cavalier (CavTel) kicks much arse. For anyone on the East Coast who can get it, do so. They are about half the price of Verizon, offer more services, and are extremely helpful when you call them.
And plus you don't have to deal with Verizon.
The only problem is Verizon doesn't like it's customers switching, so as others have pointed out getting switched is an issue. Verizon screws up the orders on purpose usually meaning you will go a day or two without service. Verizon is losing you as a customer, so they really don't care if you complain or not. I know of a dozen or more people who have had them kill their service a few days early when switching.
And Verizon also tells techs your loop distance from the CO is too long when you order CavTel DSL. However a few persistant phone calls will force them to actually send out a tech who will report this is not the case.
In fact, two friends who had Verizon report to COVAD their loops were two small got sales calls from Verizon trying to sell them DSL just a week or so after they were told it wasn't possible.
My suggestiong is any solution other than Verizon is good. They are evil bastards.
-S
-Sternn
I live in a small rural area in Michigan, and the phone lines are older and slow. I have no access to Cable or DSL either, so my only alternative was to go Satellite. Upload speed is worse than 56k, but the download speed is great. The cost is alittle hefty, around $65.00 monthly, but well worth it to me because of the speedy downloads, i.e.: service packs, critical updates, etc. If you ever have to reinstall your OS, downloading the updates would take forever. Do a search on Google.com for satellite connection. You'll be able to find a satellite provider at a much lower cost.
I just moved to Fenton (also just outside St. Louis). It wasn't until AFTER we had our new phone turned on with SWBell that we found out the number couldn't call St. Louis, nor receive calls from St. Louis, for free. Of course, this was after Bell assigned us a number, then a week later told us it was already assigned.
As for Internet, I'm too far for DSL and my neighborhood (new construction) doesn't even have cable TV! But, since I host web sites from my basement, I could actually afford a T1. Only pay $400 per month from Birch.com, who also will do local phone service (but, of course, not to Fenton).
I live about 1 hr from the metro area, otherwise my story is exactly the same. For local calls, unless you're just too far from cellular or your reception is bad enough to be practically unuseable in your residence, go with a wireless phone for voice. The SBC Metro package is a great deal if you make a ton of calls, but for the money you'd probably be better off with cellular if you only do a moderate amount of calling. Because of tariff restrictions the alternative local carriers probably won't be able to offer you a competitive package, and of those that I've dealt with none can hold a candle to SBC's customer service or that which you could expect from a wireless provider. To be honest the most of the CLECs that I know of or have used in the Missouri SBC LATAs are all bankrupt or heading that way fast. As for internet you have four choices as I see it: 1) Roll your own WISP - if you can gather up enough willing subscribers you can make this successful with a relatively low initial investment. You can buy used BreezeCom equipment, or if you're creative you might be able do it with off-the-shelf FHSS 802.11b gear. 2) Find/persuade/wait for someone else who's willing to do #1. 3) Satellite broadband (very high latency, useless for online gaming and interactive stuff like ssh/telnet). 4) Suffer with dialup. Luckily #2 happened for me, but their customer service has been so bad I've started considering #1 again. You will find lots of smaller communities in the area with WIFI ISPs now, as SBC will probably never roll out any type of DSL in their smaller exchanges, and cable is often not an option because the smaller cable companies won't / can't afford to belly up to the bar.
Directway offers a dish package. $100 a month for the first year to pay off the dish. Then $60 dollars a month after that. I am not sure on all the deals but if you don't have cable either you might be able to get a package deal from them. You also said you would use a cell. Another internet connection is the go anywhere wireless using a PCMCIA card and a cell signal. It will run you $80 dollars a month it's not broadband like the satellite but it is twice as fast as dialup.
It's possible that it is, but you don't have to join up with that stuff if you don't want to. Just get the service. It works, it's cheap and let those other guys thumb wrestle it out.
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
After noting dozens of screens of ISP diversions, I decided to reply directly to the posting.
I live in Southeast Michigan. SBC had a calling area I could drive out of in 15 minutes in any direction. For people within an hours travel time, it was cheaper to drive if I planned to talk for over half an hour.
Then I heard of Talk America, a reseller. They offered me an initial rate about $10/month higher than SBC, but with my choice of all features except privacy mangler, and, most importantly, a reasonable calling area. All but one of my friends is a toll call under the SBC scheme. In the month before converting to Talk America, I logged four minutes on my land phone. Now I log hundreds of minutes a month, getting more value than I ever got from SBC.
I had been using cellular, but that limited me to nights and weekends because of the minute volume. Getting a cellular plan with enough minutes would have involved a jump of far more than the land-line cost.
Now I can call friends in places like Warren and Ann Arbor and not worry about the cost. Any time of day. If I knew anyone in Howell (just at the edge of the 517 area code) I could call them at no charge. For me, that is the biggie, the rest of the features are a bonus. The no-charge calling area is the best thing for contacting non-local friends.
There were some initial setup issues, but those got fixed. I never did get my referal credits but if that's the worst problem I have with them I'm doing well.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
I switched to ATT in response to SBC's pursuit of small businesses who use HTML frames. I've been quite happy. SBC called and offered me $85 to switch back; I asked them to call when they were able to rein in SBC Intellectual Property Corp.
I just moved to Tucson last month and made the stupid mistake of going with Qwest for local service. I don't make long distance calls, just local calls to get internet service and talk to friends. Got my first bill yesterday for $95.
I did a little looking in to this. A simple search on google found a number of hits discussing that this is a scam and the operator is wanted on Felony fraud, stealing, etc... charges in IOWA and Missouri.
all the pizza places would be out of business with that rule in effect!
College students count as a large portion of their customer base and most of us (ie. the smart ones) don't pay the ridiculous land line fees and have opted for a single cell phone for all of our calls.
I'd never heard of anyone not delivering to cell phones until I read this!
How do you plug your computer modem into a cell phone? I'm not being sarcastic... Is there some kind of RJ45 adapter that goes into a cell phone? I believe laptops use IR, which regular boxes don't have.
We all sit around the campfires at USENET's comp.dcom.telecom and talk about CLECs (Competitive Local Exchange Carriers, what this fellow is inquiring about) all day, and all of the night.
Stop by and visit us, we're mostly friendly.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
I used Vonage and have not regretted it one bit.
-Rob