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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'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.
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.
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.
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.