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Verizon's DSL Gets Naked

Ant writes "According to Broadband Reports' news story, Verizon today announced they are now offering 'naked DSL' service (DSL without mandatory local service) in the Northeast. CBS/Marketwatch indicates Northeast customers (ex-NYNEX and Bell Atlantic) can cut or switch their local service with no penalty, starting today. The company insists the move will be national in time, but gave no timeline for when naked DSL would be available elsewhere. Verizon had promised this in May of last year, but then seemingly backtracked."

20 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. What a shame by Svippy · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was hoping now I could believe to surf naked without me feeling ashamed. :(

    I still have to live with the suffering, it seems.

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    Clicked pie.
    1. Re:What a shame by Valiss · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah, well, I bet others would suffer less if you turned off the webcam. =]

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      -Valiss
  2. About Time by Cheirdal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I haven't had a landline in years. I live with just my cellphone and cable modem. If Verizon had offered naked DSL when I moved a few years back they'd have gotten my service instead of a cable company.

    1. Re:About Time by joe_bruin · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember having had an apartment in (the slums of) Beverly Hills, and having to apply for LifeLine phone service so I could get my DSL. A LifeLine is the most basic phone service you can get, for about ten dollars per month, but there's a maximum income limit. It was interesting telling the lady on the phone that my zip code is 90210, and then swearing that I make under $10,000/year to qualify for the LifeLine, and then adding DSL onto that.

  3. Wow by jim_v2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If it makes it to where I am, I would gladly switch to dsl instead my cable. I don't need all the bandwidth that cable provides, but DSL costs just as much right now because I have to have a phone line with it. (I use a cell phone)

    --
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  4. Commercials.... by JazzyJ · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is Verizon actually calling it "Naked DSL"?

    If they are...can't wait to see the commercials for it.

    1. Re:Commercials.... by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 5, Funny

      Can you see me now?

      Good!

      --
      the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
  5. Ahh... by Delta2.0 · · Score: 4, Funny
    Verizon's DSL Gets Naked

    Put that back on, I don't want to see that!!!

  6. US is ahead by superpulpsicle · · Score: 3, Interesting

    http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/44065

    In Canada, they can't offer naked DSL since the lines would oxidize and fail. Folks, I am not making this stuff up.

    1. Re:US is ahead by Kiryat+Malachi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Part of the reasoning behind choosing -48VDC as the line voltage was, in fact, to help prevent oxidation of buried lines.

      I'm not making it up either. There's a lot of funky shit in the telco systems, but some of it is for very good reason.

      --

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  7. Verizon's FIOS Even Better by MBraynard · · Score: 5, Informative

    Verizon's Fios puts their DSL to shame where available - naked or not. $50 a month for 15Mbps down and 2 up. Hot hot hot.

  8. Naked by birth not intervention by FidelCatsro · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well shouldnt this really be the way it should always have been.
    The fact they they try to impose a mandatory term of services on people is has always been something i have had a great deal of problems with (im not from the USA ,dosn't work like this where im from , they just hit you with a contract for 2 years).
    Very few other service industry impose such penalites upon us , infact its quite odd to me that this behaviour has been allowed , are there not laws top prevent companys from abusing monopolys in this way .

    --
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  9. Good, now ignore local monopolies. by DarkSarin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Seriously, if Verizon, or any other phone company would just start offering service EVERYWHERE, instead of JUST in localized areas, so that we had truly competitive phone lines, then I would be happy.

    I hate that I can't get DSL without phone service--I too am a vonage user, so that's why I hate it. Unfortunately, my cable company sucks, and I have a period every other day or so when my line goes down mysteriously, and I have to reset my vonage box or my cable modem (or both).

    --
    "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
  10. Too bad it won't be available at Burning Man by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 3, Funny

    that's where Naked DSL would go over really well.

    But I hear they use FireWire there instead.

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    -- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
  11. Love now or hate?? by danielsfca2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, somebody remind me, do we hate Verizon now, for their CEO hating municipal wifi? Or do we love them for being the first behemoth telco to offer naked DSL in a big way? What's the Slashdot party line now?

  12. Importance by fm6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Note the importance of this. There must be a lot of unused copper pairs in Verizons service area for them to even consider doing this. It suggests that a good fraction of the people living in the northeast are dispensing with landlines. In other words, Verizon's core business, which has been the biggest industry in the U.S. for over a century, is dying.

  13. Re:Okay, quick question then: by UWC · · Score: 4, Interesting
    DNS Servers (is that redundant?)

    I wondered the same thing the other day. According to Wikipedia, DNS = Domain Name System, so "DNS Server" is correct and not redundant.

    I just feel sorry for their call center people since the DNS crap started. They must be swamped. Have they resolved the issues yet? My router is still using 4.2.2.1 for now after I realized the problem was apparently recurring.

    Phone company in these parts is BellSouth, with their overpriced "FastAccess" DSL, which I used from 2001 through last summer, at which point there were BellSouth service problems and a nice introductory deal going with Comcast. Haven't really regretted the switch.

    My main beef is still the upstream bandwidth throttling on pretty much all consumer-grade broadband services. I regularly get over 400KB/s while downloading large files, but 30KB/s saturates my upstream and pretty much brings my internet connection to a halt.

  14. I have it and I hate it. by syukton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have Verizon DSL and I have had few problems until just recently. Just recently they changed their IP scheme (used to be 4.x.x.x now it's 71.x.x.x) in my area as well as the behavior of their DHCP servers (MAC-based authorization). It's been a huge pain in my ass that I wasn't at all notified about. They've also been getting progressively slower over time and just recently (Saturday) they had an unexplained 5-hour outage in the 425 area code (the *entire* area code). However, I am at the outer limits of DSL's coverage range and any number of factors could be affecting my own personal experiences.

    Comcast is running a special right now, first 5 months for $29.99 each month (This makes it the same price as Verizon) if you're a current Comcast subscriber. It's $10/month extra for "naked cable internet" as it were. That's the nice thing about Comcast: they'll give you what you want, for a price, while Verizon is just not about making people happy.

    I say that they're not about making people happy because I spent 35 minutes on hold while waiting to talk to somebody about their nullroute problem. They play a "helpful tips" message over and over again, no hold music, and a "your call is important, you're in a queue, yadda yadda" message, looped as well. There's a pause between the voice offering tips and when it plays the first tip, lulling you into some kind of false sense of security, as if it's picking a random tip to share. Nope, it's the same stupid tips, over and over. ("unplugging and restarting your DSL modem can fix most DSL problems!") I really wish they'd just give me some hold music and an option to press 1 for some quick tips if I want them. But you see, Verizon isn't about choices, which is why they like locking people into the "you need basic phone service to get DSL" thing. They don't like people having options, they like to dictate what people can and can't do. I say fuck 'em, if they're gonna be like that.

    Tangentially, I wonder how much latent anger towards women is generated by these automated female voices that do nothing other than frustrate and irritate us? I would prefer an obviously-synthesized robotic voice over a trying-to-sound-human voice. I hate those machines

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  15. Re:It's about time! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Same here. One of the reasons I haven't switched to DSL from cable was price. True, DSL is only $30 a month, but you had to have an existing phone line which can range from $30 - $50 depending on fees and extras. But like many people, I haven't owned a telephone in years. I only have a cell phone.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  16. Re:Okay, quick question then: by MaineCoon · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just cancelled Verizon today, having switched to Comcast and tried it for a couple weeks, in the West LA (Manhatten Beach/Marina Del Rey/LAX) area.

    I play Desert Combat a lot, and I used to get great pings - 10-30 or so. However, after about 9 months of great service, suddenly I was getting 70 ping as an average, with frequent prolonged rapid fluctuations between 20 and 200, sometimes settling out at 150. This happened with various servers and various games. Tracert showed the problem was the Verizon/Level3 (I think it was Level3, whoever the upstream provider is) hookup... but because the IP showing the ping problems in Tracert is listed as being owned by Level3, not by Verizon, they claimed the problem was not their fault and they could do nothing (HELLO! Thats YOUR uplink!)

    So I switched to Comcast. Now I get 500 KB(KByte, not Kbit) downloads from FilePlanet and elsewhere - 3x faster than what my 1.5megabit DSL gave me - and an average ping of 20-30 to the servers I play on.

    I loved Verizon for the 9 months I used it, until the ping problem. After that... it was all downhill. Comcast gives me 3x the throughput and a much better latency than Verizon, for $5/mth more.

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