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Qwest To Offer 'Naked DSL'
hussar writes "Qwest is expected to announce today its plan to delink telephone service from its DSL offering. Given some comments I have seen in /. discussions of broadband issues, the plan, nicknamed 'naked DSL,' should be a welcome change." Update: 02/25 13:55 GMT by T :
cpfeifer points to the
Wall Street Journal's coverage.
I stopped getting access at home because I got an 802-ready laptop.
Now I just go to cafes and such. It's great, and FREE!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
I've been harassing my dsl provider for it for a while now.
It's simple I say, either I drop my landline and get rid of my DSL, or drop the landline and keep the DSL.
Do you want some of my money, or none of my money?
They still dont seem to get it though. Good for Qwest customers.
I am not an expert on bandwith deistribution amongs different types of conectivity. But is this better then standard cable for a medium-traffic website?
I pay 52$ right now for a Comcast cable connection, and they do not give me enough upstream bandwidth for my website. I would like to buy DSL for a chepper price, but would have lower downstream (DSL from these guys is 1 megabit down IIRC and comcast gives me 3 down).
Would DSL be a better choise for me?
I wonder if the next step for Qwest is to offer VoIP "phone" service on naked DSL and then claim that subscribers don't have to pay all those nasty federal, state, and local taxes. This tactic could level the playing field between VoIP upstarts like Vonage and RBOC behemouths like Qwest.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
With more people using cell phones, this should have been in the plan from the start.
Plus most cable companies around me allow you to get just the internet for a base rate.
Keeps the market open for people who don't use your primary service.
our cable service here is awful. The channels are fuzzy, it's expensive, it takes 2 weeks for anyone to come out here to look at any problems. I would get rid of the cable TV service in a heartbeat if the tv and internet service could be seperate. btw, the internet service is awful too, but it's better than dial up.
Adelphia knows they have a shitty cable service and most would gladly switch to satellite if they didn't need their internet service.
I would like to see some sort of regulation of this. This is not fair to the consumer. It's like how PC OEM's won't usually sell a PC without an OS. Did I mention I hate adelphia?
As Forbes is now crying:
Qwest to offer DSL without voice, national mobile
Reuters, 02.25.04, 1:22 AM ET
NEW YORK, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Qwest Communications International Inc. (nyse: Q - news - people) will reveal plans on Wednesday to become the first major U.S. telephone company offering broadband Internet separately from traditional phone services in a bid to hang onto customers in a cutthroat market.
The fourth biggest U.S. local telephone company and the dominant provider in 14 states from Minnesota to Washington also plans to launch flat-rate nationwide mobile phone services, using Sprint PCS's (nyse: PCS - news - people) network next Monday.
Qwest and bigger rivals such as Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ - news - people) have been trying to expand their product lines amid growing competition as local, long-distance and wireless companies battle it out in each other's markets with new packages of service, discounts and heavy advertising.
Qwest, which faces a lingering accounting probe by federal regulators, reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss last Thursday as local telephone sales dropped.
From Saturday Qwest customers will not need to pay the company's monthly telephone service fees of $14.95 if they only want to subscribe to its broadband or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) customers in a service it nicknamed "Naked DSL".
Local phone providers such as Verizon require DSL customers to also subscribe to at least basic telephone services.
"We're in a competitive situation in all our markets," said spokesman Tyler Gronbach, noting that Qwest is losing local phone line sales as some customers prefer to have just a cellphone or others favor cheaply priced Internet telephone services.
"If we can keep a customer by giving them a broadband service that's what its all about," he said.
The company, which also runs a wireless phone service in its 14 operating states, plans to move local consumer and business clients to Sprint's mobile network in these states.
It will let these customers roam onto Sprint's national network outside of its states for a flat fee and will offer them Sprint's fast wireless data services in a month's time.
Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service
Sig it.
In Holland, KPN and resellers of their local loop have offered DSL service without POTS from a long time. There is talk of this happening in the UK too, but the BT (UK local incumbant) ordering process uses the subscriber POTS number for order provisioning and customer pinpointing, a new method using post code and house number is going to be used. Methinks that this will take 2 years to get right.
You buy the DSL, and you have to also buy an "ISP". You end up spending as much as a faster cable modem.
The Qwest phone line I have is useless. Whenever I go to make a call I get a female voice telling me "We can not process your custom calling request."
In another words, they don't have a dialtone. This happens a lot.
Does anybody want to join me in a class action lawsuit?
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
what is the price of dsl before and after you take out the land line? with verizon i pay 35 for 1.5/128 dsl and 12 for a land line. oh, and i have a verizon cell phone for 36 a month, 500 minutes. let's talk prices, people.
You basically don't have any leverage at all with the phone company as an individual. Only in large groups can you get them to pay attention. One individual's subscription is an amount that can't even be found on the telco's balance sheet.
I live in a major metro area. I keep reading about the new DSL plans, I get at least one DSL come-on in the mail every week, and see things like FTTP being rolled out in Podunk, but I'm stuck here with no access to DSL, and as near as I can tell, no plans to provide it here, ever. About once a month, I go online to check the DSL availability in my neighborhood; no joy. They won't explain why; I'm within the distance range, but apparently there is a repeater in the way, or the line guage is too small.
My only economical (?) choice for broadband is Comcast's excuse for cable service. I keep a dialup ISP account as a backup, because dialup is not only more reliable than Comcast, it's occasionally FASTER.
I've even thought about starting a community ISP and getting a T1, but that's way too expensive... Turns out that getting T1 in my neighborhood is about three times as expensive as it would be just five block away!
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I have naked DSL from Verizon. I thought this would be a slam dunk with Vonage (better overall rates, keep my old area code, etc.). But Verizon's service seems to include a great deal of latency and packet loss that makes VoIP not so much fun to use. I never had these problems with my Time Warner Cable Modem. It makes me wonder if the Telecoms are deliberately providing this slightly degraded service, knowing that it won't affect most Internet usage (web, email), but will hose their IP-based telephony competitors.
Back when I had Earthlink DSL, my phone service was cut off for a few days and I was still able to use DSL although the phone line itself was dead. BellSouth was my phone provider. I didn't know it was any different with other providers. Or perhaps it was only becuause I had service that was suspended, thus never being fully cut off. Dunno for sure, but naked DSL service may not be completely unheard of.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
My first reaction to this annoucement was "Great, I can finally ditch my phone that I never use, but keep my DSL!" But on a second's more thought, I think I'd rathre keep the phone line. I don't use it much, and I have my billing set up so that I pay per call (even local calls). Because I don't use the phone much, my phone bill is ridiculously low, like less than $16 a month (including taxes and fees but not including the DSL charge). Now, even though I don't use my phone that much, my friends and family call me on it all the time (what can I say, people around here just have not adjusted to the idea of cell phones being the number one form of voice communication). I don't get charged for incoming calls, and, as a matter of convenience, it's easier for me to keep the voice line and the number.
Back a few years ago when I was building out for an ISP we decided to roll DSL. The LEC is SBC in this area, and they were JUST getting to where they understood what needed to be done for a reseller to use their ground copper, DSLAMs and Redbacks. We basically beta tested this for SBC in this area and for a while they coundn't get the lines conditioned right so they would deploy an unbundled loop (a pair with no tone) at every install for DSL to ride on. They still required a working SBC phone number to provision the loop, but once it was installed you could cancel the phone service. I had a working unbundled loop at my house untill 6 months ago when I switched to cable. Now they no longer allow it....I think McLeod still rolls this way and Speakeasy used to allow it too I think. Most require a working phone # to provision, which can be canceled at a later date. Of course, this could all be changed now.
nb
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What happened to Qwest? They're actually offering good services and more options lately... Was there some change of management?
I'm actually happy with Qwest for once... in the past 3 months: they have lowered my DSL costs by 3 bucks, cut my long distance to 5 cents/minute with a cap of $20/mnth and no monthly fee, raised my DSL speed from 640k/256k to 1.5mbit/1mbit for no additional cost, and now give me the option to cancel phone service altogether.
At one time I REALLY wanted this option because I was so fed up with them. However, with the current changes they've been making lately, I think I'll be keeping my voice line for now!
You know...
I was thinking...
This would be REALLY cool for VOIP!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Anyway, I was there when the technician came over to install my DSL and, as expected, the inside wiring would not carry the signal.
So what I had him do instead was run a line directly from the phone box outside the building, and ran the wire through a window. Perfect. No phone service, just DSL.
If you live in a building where you can run the wire right to the box, talk to the tech when he gets there. If he is competent, this might work out for you.
As an ISP, I used to sell DSL to customers using bare copper rented from the telco, with ADSL and no dialtone running down the line.
The problem we had with this is that the lines would often get "accidentally" cut. Telco field techs hunting for free pairs in a cable bundle would often listen in, find no audible signal whatsoever, assume the pair was free and hijack it.
We considered building some hardware to inject bogus audible tones into the lines in order to prevent this from happening but never got around to doing it.
(We also sold other types of DSL (like SDSL) using the same bare wires, but there's no problem there because SDSL sounds like something if you listen in)
omico--