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Becoming a CLEC?
eric76 asks: "It finally happened. DSL has come to the town where I work in Texas. While most would see that as a plus, the problem is that I work for a small ISP offering dialup and fixed wireless. The $26.95 / month DSL could drive us out of business. So I'm looking at what it takes to become a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). That is, we'd become a local telephone company purchasing telephone service, particularly DSL, at wholesale from the ILEC (SBC) and reselling it at retail prices. Has anyone else gone through this? What did it cost? How long did it take? Is there a minimum size to make it worthwhile?"
A good researcher uses all of his resources. I don't see why it's somehow <b>bad</b> to use the experience of other Slashdotters when you undertake something big. Maybe some of the input is valuable.
Anyway, what does it matter do you? Go to your preferences and get rid of Ask Slashdot and you'll never see it again.
I'd actually just call covad and have them do your DSL for you. It will save you the headache of becoming your own phone company. It's not like providing DSL service is all that hard either. You can have that setup through your phone company. There's no reason to go off and be your own CLEC when your local phone company should be able to provide DSL to your customers.
Look at it this way. Earthlink DSL == Covad
MSN DSL == Qwest (at least here)
I would take the covad route though. It will mean you will have to setup a redback server to take care of the authentication, but it really saves a lot of headaches.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */