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The Internet Businesses Communications IT

Verizon's DSL Gets Naked 204

Posted by timothy from the everyone-does-eventually dept.
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."
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Verizon's DSL Gets Naked More

Verizon's DSL Gets Naked

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  • What a shame (Score:5, Funny)

    by Svippy ( 876087 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:55PM (#12274791) Homepage
    I was hoping now I could believe to surf naked without me feeling ashamed. :(

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

  • About Time (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Cheirdal ( 776541 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:56PM (#12274805) Homepage
    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.

    • Re:About Time (Score:5, Funny)

      by joe_bruin ( 266648 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:34PM (#12275214) Homepage Journal
      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.
    • No kidding. I'm about to move to a new place, and I've been looking at how I'm going to get internet access. Personally, I don't want to pay for cable TV or land phone service, because I don't watch much TV and I already own a cellular phone.

      Right now there doesn't seem to be anybody who offers naked service for either broadband internet access option. But if naked DSL were available in my area, and if it were even 10,15 bucks cheaper than a Cable/Internet "Value Pack", that would be what I choose, hand

    • Re:About Time (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Doppler00 ( 534739 )
      I've been landline free since 2000. It's nice to see others too. I think this is what Verizon is realizing. So many people have gone to the CableTV + CableInternet + Cellphone combination because of the immense savings compared to: Cable TV + Plain Telephone + DSL Line + Cellphone service.

      I for one wouldn't mind switching to naked DSL if it means my internet is only 1.5Mbps (oh how slow!) at $30 month instead of 4Mbps at $60/month.
  • Which is better? Comcast cable or Verizon DSL? I have Comcast now. Should I consider switching? Opinions? Technical facts?
    • Verizon is cheaper, Comcast is faster. It really depends on how fast you want to go. Ask otehr people in your area how they like Verizon. Broadband can be hell in some areas and heaven in others.

    • For download speed, cable is tough to beat - ComCast currently offers 3 mbits, and I think they're moving up to 4 mbits - and even 6 mbits if you pay a little extra.

      The downside of Comcast is the upload speed - 384 kbits. That's more than plenty for surfing, email, gaming, etc., but if you do large uploads (I regularly sync up large file repositories between home and an office server), then a DSL offering can get the nod - IF you get a service level with a reasonably higher upload speed.

      All in al

    • Re:Okay, quick question then: (Score:5, Informative)

      by MaineCoon ( 12585 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @07:14PM (#12275671) Homepage
      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.
    • For me it was Verizon vs Time Warner. I ended up choosing Verizon after having Time Warner for a few months. It came down to these reasons.

      1. Cable provides faster overall throughput but Verizon has faster upstream speeds (important for me because I run servers).

      2. Verizon appears to have a less restrictive policy towards capping, so no worries about downloading/uploading as much as you want.

      3. The Verizon news servers are excellent.

      4. Personally I had a terrible experience with cable. During some perio
    • In my experience, Comcast is better. Here's why:

      1. Verizon can't actually deliver DSL that works to my house. They're willing to charge me for the service, but not willing to actually get it working. I had DSL for several months and it kept having hours-long outages that they couldn't resolve. To this day they keep sending me flyers to buy their DSL service.

      2. If your DSL or phone connection doesn't work, God help you if you have Verizon. It took them a week to send someone out to fix my phone a

  • Wow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jim_v2000 ( 818799 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:57PM (#12274815)
    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)

  • Commercials.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by JazzyJ ( 1995 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:57PM (#12274816) Homepage Journal
    Is Verizon actually calling it "Naked DSL"?

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

  • Ahh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Delta2.0 ( 846278 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:57PM (#12274818)
    Verizon's DSL Gets Naked

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

  • US is ahead (Score:4, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:58PM (#12274829)
    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.

    • Re:US is ahead (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Kiryat Malachi ( 177258 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:10PM (#12274988) Journal
      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.

      • Re:US is ahead (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cbreaker ( 561297 )
        Something tells me they could still pump the 48V down the lines even without local analog service, though..

      • Re:US is ahead (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The LECs provide current on loops even if they have no service. You can always use dial around numbers, 911 or the old faithful operator.
        • Not necessarily true. Some pairs are not provided with current at all; on these pairs, you can't use any of the above. Dedicated lines are also often not energized.
    • They could just charge you for the DSL service and still run -48vDC on the line; it won't hurt you any. They don't have to actually assign a phone number to the line and won't have to pay for the load on there SS7 system to route the calls. Actually at least around here (suburban Illinois), mid 1990's DSL was a seperate line that your paid for totally seperatly from your phone service. I just upgraded mine to the kind that shares a line with the PSTN, and its a lot faster.
    • I just had my Bell Canada landline cancelled today (I live in mid-town Toronto).

      The CRTC (government regulator) ordered Bell to do what it promised last year by the end of March 2005, and they did. Bell is "soft-launching" it for now (i.e., you have to call and ask, they aren't advertising it on their website, for the obvious reason that they are rolling out their own VoIP in Ontario/Quebec this year)

      But now I have Sympatico Hi-Speed (2mb/s) and Vonage VoIP (500min/month for $20CDN), with no landline (wh

    • Total Nonsense (Score:3, Informative)

      by brunes69 ( 86786 )
      Er... so this means that if I disconnect my local phone service, then the line to my house will oxidize and I would be unable to re-connect it next year?

      Yeah... total BS. You need the *voltage* but not *dial tone*. The only thing standing in the way of naked DSL in Canada is that Bell wants to force you to get a landline.

  • Verizon's FIOS Even Better (Score:5, Informative)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:58PM (#12274835) Journal
    Verizon's Fios [verizon.com] puts their DSL to shame where available - naked or not. $50 a month for 15Mbps down and 2 up. Hot hot hot.
    • And where is it available? I'm guessing that Verizon hasn't gotten around to digging up every street in America yet. Whereas their DSL service is available to anyone within a certain distance of one of their switches.
      • It is available in several suburbs of Dallas now. Most the farther out ones though where there is alot of newer development.

      • Good question. It doesn't seem to be available anywhere in Colorado (at least not along the Front Range). You can't get any Verizon DSL at all here it seems. You can get Verizon DSL in Florida, Boston and California it seems but I couldn't find anyone that could get Fios (I just went through a dozen or so numbers in my contact list).
      • A large part of my county is without DSL service of any kind, even though the county is always trying to present itself as some major hotbed of technology. Verizon is the -only- game in town for landlines and uses great skill in exercising their monopoly. You are lucky if you have one choice of cable for internet, and no wireless available.

        There is obviously great demand for the service, yet Verizon simply refuses to provide the service - yet they have unlimited funds to fight local wifi access.

        Personal

        • Hey, if you want to fight back, tell us the name of your county. Publicity can't hurt.

          I'm a little suprised that none of the third-party DSL providers have tried to move into your area. There may be technical issues. Or it may just be that Verizon has done a good job of locking them out.

    • So, wondering why your post is marked as Informative.. it's got nothing to do with the topic at hand.

      And FIOS is available... just about nowhere. Unless you live in select locations in California or Florida.

    • Why does that not seem so fast for fiber ?

      This is why we need muni FTTH .
    • I wonder about this part of their FAQ:
      Your router also contains special diagnostic software that can help us trouble shoot and correct problems should you experience trouble with your Internet connection. You will need to use the Verizon provided routers with the Fios Internet service.
      Why do I have to use their router? What exactly does this "special" software do?
      • Well unless you got a router with a verizon FIOS interface in it, you'd have to.

        And I'm guessing that it will probably do your standard "routing" as much as a cablemodem does so it wouldn't be much different - you'd still need your linux box routing for you.

        Or, it could be a cool little routing device like I got with my DSL when I was in NYC. Little ZyXel thing, it could do port forwarding, GRE nat, DHCP server, and all sorts of other cool stuff.
      • I'm guessing that it has something to do with them not having to support the spare Cisco 12000 you have kicking around.
      • I have FIOS and I don't use their router. I use my own. Their router is a D-Link piece of garbage.

        I just use my wrt54g, and it works like a charm.

    • I checked the add which claimed it is $49.95. However, I have Qwest naked DSL which theoretically costs about $35. But after ever increasing fees, taxes, and service charges it now costs about $54 per month. I bet that Verizon Fios is similar and probably adds up to near or even more than $70 per month. (I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong. I know broadband cable doesn't tack on such huge fees.)
    • And this is definitely not naked. Even on their front page, it shows you have to take MSN Premium with it. I can barely stand the other forced accounts many service providers tack on, why would I even consider something like what Microsoft deems necessary?

      And like another pointed out, it has very limited availability.
    • Do you know if it's possible to get FIOS without a phone line? I have FIOS, but I have not yet tried to ditch my Verizon phone service.

  • Naked by birth not intervention (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro&gmail,com> on Monday April 18, 2005 @05:59PM (#12274847) Journal
    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 .
    • No. The companies have seen to it that laws were passed to protect their monopolies and that their power to make draconian rules is protected.
    • Actually its become quite common in Europe now for companies to try an screw you with recurring contract renewal unless you explicitly opt out by informing them with written notification, carved in stone, in quadruplicate, aprox 72 months before the contract was due for renewal. Of course they dont like to tell you this up front, preferring you to find out after they have charged you rather that clutter up their nice contract with clear t&c.
      • Dont have to tell me about that one ;) ,They made the mistake of trying to pull that stunt on me (Detuches telekom) and the person i had on the phone got taken through every one of the consumer rights laws they had implemented over the last 50 years(i exagerate) , well in the end they droped my contract .

        The thing is they have no real right to do this and more people need to be infomred about our rights to tell these people where to go .
        you are right though , they are really trying to tighten the thumb scr

  • Too Late (Score:3, Insightful)

    by poofyhairguy82 ( 635386 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:00PM (#12274868) Journal
    Too little, too late for me. I asked them to do this for me at the begining of the year. I had used their DSL for a year, and I got about 3.0 MB down (400kbs up) for about 80 bucks a month. It would have been 30, except for the fact that the phone service costed the difference. I never used the phone, and I wanted cheaper DSL. When they kept saying it wouldn't happen, I dropped verizon and picked up my local cable company for broadband. I get 4 mb down and .5 mb up for 50 bucks a month, without Verizon's shit.

    • Re:Too Late (Score:2, Insightful)

      by periol ( 767926 )
      you're obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed. all you need is a dialtone, which verizon would have provided you for $12 a month. all this does is drop that $12 fee. if you paid more, there's only one place to point the blame, and you can do it tomorrow morning in the mirror right before you get in the shower.
      • Or even as low as $5/month. Switch your line to "metered service" for local calls. You'll be charged by the minute for all local calls even as close as next door (after a $3.00/month buffer), but you're not using the line anyway right?

        I have a phone attached to my line for emergencies (like calling my cell so I can find where I left the bugger), with the ringer turned off.

        So "Naked DSL" saves you $5/month...and maybe some $20 setup charge or such. *yawn* This is news worthy?

      • Re:Too Late (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rawshark ( 603493 )
        When I was living in Los Angeles Verizon charged a "Federal Interstate Calling Fee" which was about 6 or 7 dollars. I tried telling them that I will never make interstate calls on this line and they gave me some BS about it being required by law.

        Bleah. Monopolies

  • Good, now ignore local monopolies. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DarkSarin ( 651985 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:01PM (#12274875) Homepage Journal
    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).

    • Well Verizon could, they'd just have to put their DSLAMs in every CO in the country. And to do that they'd have to, almost certainly, file a lawsuit with every single local telco in the country since while, theoretically legal, no telco will let that happen without a serious fight. Once all those get resolved, in about 5 years, then they could actually start deploying the DSLAMS, hooking them into a SONET ring, etc. All just to compete in a already saturated market place ;).

      Yep. Not going to happen.

      I am s
    • The first step to solving this problem is using Speak Easy... [speakeasy.net]. I won't go into details but VZ has been dragging their feet offering DSL, loosing market share for DSL as a whole to cable in the process, simply to kill off the little guys. When they do, they will engage in a particularly nasty price war with cable and eventually settle with 34-45% of the market before jacking up their prices. Get away from the cable and phone monopolies, regardless if there is "competition" in your area, since even
    • Let see the choices are now:

      1) your local cable monopoly

      2) your local phone monopoly (assuming you are not currently in verizon's market)

      3) a different local phone monopoly. (verizon has part of its roots in Bell Atlantic and Nynex RBOC's)

      I fail to see why the parent post thinks he is ignorning the monopolies.
    • check your MTU setting, I had a similar problem, with verizon DSL

      I reset my MTU to 1492- hasn't happened since.

      look for DRTCP to adjust it easily.
  • that's where Naked DSL would go over really well.

    But I hear they use FireWire there instead.

  • I've had massive problems with my Verizon DSL. Some sort of noise on the line that happens every single night, but it's fine in the day. It's obviously some sort of problem up the line, perhaps crosstalk, but they've shown no interest in helping me track it down. I was going to cancel it tonight.

    I was about to bail on Verizon DSL and try cable, but cable's more expensive. So I'm going to see if I can get it on one of the other dry pairs that go into my house and see if that helps.
    • How are your house lines? When I had DSL my house lines were *CRAP*. The speed would drop everytime I got a phonecall (yes I had the filters installed correctly -- we had 2 lines and there was crosstalk). I ran a seperate line from the distribution point and it thereafter reset my DSL no more then every few months.

      I would suggest running a direct line to the modem and seeing what happens. Also, you can put the DSL modem in your garage (or wherever your distributino box is) and run cat5 from it into th

  • Only the Northeast? (Score:3, Informative)

    by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:09PM (#12274969) Journal

    Bah, those of us with Verizon DSL in Florida just got our rates raised unless we sign a year long contract. I think I'm paying something like $40/month just for DSL (more when you factor in the phone line that I don't use, with taxes it comes out to $63.75/month). Where I live Verizon is the only choice for DSL, and cable modem service is even more expensive if you don't already have cable television (at least it was before the new rate raise, I'll have to reconsider cable modem service when I move in June). I even thought about just going with dialup. But I'd still have to pay the $20/month for a phone line I don't use so it wouldn't be worth it.

  • Love now or hate?? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by danielsfca2 ( 696792 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:14PM (#12275023) Journal
    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?

  • Importance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:18PM (#12275074) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • In other words, Verizon's core business, which has been the biggest industry in the U.S. for over a century, is dying.

      How can we be sure? I have not seen any confirmation from netcraft.
  • With the RBOCs getting on board with VOIP you will see this happen with all the US telcos. There is talk about pair bonding in the works for DSL which will provide 26 meg in the next year or so. My ISP has 6 meg now. With those speed increases, VOIP and IPTV (we shall see) become viable and the need for regular DSL (with the clothes on) will no longer be needed. I know that in the eyes of the consumer that time has passed. However it is a big move when the phone companies see it as well.

  • I have it and I hate it. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by syukton ( 256348 ) * on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:21PM (#12275108)
    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

  • If I remember correctly, Qwest had this out west (CO), anyone know what happened to it?

    • Re:Qwest (Score:3, Informative)

      by Obfuscant ( 592200 )
      Dunno about Qwest, but SBC in the Monterrey CA area has been doing it for years.

      I wouldn't deal with Qwest. Those are the folks who lied to me repeatedly just to get me to sign up. Their technical staff and sales people told me "static IPs are included in the monthly price". We even talked about using one of the free DNS services to map the static IP to a name (since Qwest didn't do that.) After installation, I was told "static IP is an extra cost feature, $16/month" and "we will not provide the service we

      • Their technical staff and sales people told me "static IPs are included in the monthly price". We even talked about using one of the free DNS services to map the static IP to a name (since Qwest didn't do that.)

        See, I wonder if that wasn't just a misunderstanding on their--or your--end. It's an inexcusable misunderstanding if on their part, but the fact that you discussed using free DNS services kind of throws me off. Most of those free DNS services are geared for use with Dynamic IP addresses, and I wond
    • Qwest has it in the areas of ND and Minessota I've lived for a couple of years, but I'm not sure if that's just because the cable companies in those areas offered naked cable modems (cause they did.)
  • ...and the operator didn't seem to know anything about it being available now and insisted that it would be out sometime in the next year. I live in Maryland and I'm pretty sure that when I was a kid (not too far from here) we had Bell Atlantic. Is this just a case of cluelessness on the part of Verizon employees, or so you think they are trying to force people to keep paying for local service?
  • 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.

    I'd be willing to bet money the timing of both this release and the previous was carefully planned to mollify some states public service utilities or some bill being reviewed in Congress.

    Perhaps http://www.thestandard.com/internetnews/000850.ph p / [thestandard.com]

  • I also had problems with Verizon. I went from being able to get DSL to not being able to get it, and when I asked about naked DSL the support person was dumbfounded. This was also met with the usual "We have no plans to upgrade the DSLAM equipment in the CO you are connected to."

    My answer was "cancel my phone service please." Since then I have been using T-Mobile hot spots for my access and where ever I can find a open access point. With T-Mobile I get synchronous T-1, and since I am a T-Mobile subscriber
    • Do you by any chance use your phone as a GPRS modem over bluetooth? I've been considering adding this service to my phone, but I'm not sure if it works.
      • Not at the moment, but I plan on trying this in the future. The "free phone" I got with the service doesn't even support a PC connection. But they do offer a 200+ dollar PCMCIA card that does.

  • Speakeasy, and preparing for this w/ one pair (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dacarr ( 562277 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @06:30PM (#12275180) Homepage Journal
    Speakeasy [speakeasy.net] had this first, branding it Onelink. I think they rolled it out in September. Note too, if you only have one copper pair (some places have this), it complicates things a little bit - you'll have to come in with a VoIP line already established, forward your old phone number to the VoIP, and when the DSL is ready to hook up, instruct the tech to make the switch at the punch board. At your option, you either shuck the old number, keep it, or arrange for a transfer, which *might* involve a new VoIP account (and all the logistics thereunto related).
  • I've had both Adelphia cable and Verizon DSL for the last few years. DSL has been *way* more reliable. It's faster too, because Adelphia's network is so bogged. But for the last year I've had cable because I didn't want to pay an extra $20/month for a land line I didn't need (I use my cell phone, also Verizon, for all my calls.) It looks like now I can switch back. I wonder when naked DSL is coming to the mid-Atlantic.
  • I prefer to let the free market forces rule, and this seems to be what has happened here.

    But in some cases it makes sense for government to regulate the free market, in particular about (near) monopolies and anticompetitive behaviour. Forcing customers to buy fixed-line telephony from the same company if they want DSL is clearly anticompetitive behaviour.

    In Denmark where I live more people have high-speed Internet access than in the United States. This is mostly due to our government imposing restrictio

    • In some cases you can even buy telephony from one company and buy Internet access from another company on the same physical wire, but I do not think this is government-mandated.

      Wait you mean this is different to what's normal? In Australia I haven't had any trouble getting it...

  • Guys, I live in Maryland. Is that included in the naked DSL?

    More generally, how can we lookup exactly what's covered? (Their website asks for a phone number, but I don't have a landline by virtue of being in the market for naked dsl!)

  • Verizon's operators don't know yet (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm in Cambridge MA. I just phoned them four times. Responses:

    1. anger: you can't have DSL without local phone!
    2. oh, you want to buy our VoiceWing product (VOIP)
    3. call transferred to dead-end
    4. admits that she hasn't heard of it yet, and none of her co-workers have either, but that I'm not the first to call about it. She wanted to know where I heard about it, so I read her an AP news clipping.

    So I guess we'll have to wait a while until they get their act together.
  • I just recently switched from more than five years with DSL to cable because of the cost. For $10 more than my DSL provider (Covad), I'm now getting more than 3x the download speed and 3x the upload speed. I can go even faster if I want to throw another $10 at it. I know that Verizon is cheaper, but the value still isn't there.

    This is a great hurdle for Verizon to overcome. As more and more people are switching to cellular for voice, not locking people into a base package (which costs at least $23 th
    • But until Verizon (and DSL providers in general) get their heads out of the "1.5 Mb is the fastest that we give" particularly for those of us who are less than 5,000 feet from the CO (like myself), DSL just doesn't provide the value.

      Ummm, well, considering they now offer 3.0Mbps for $30, I think maybe that time has come.

  • so verizon is just catching up with qwest, eh? (Score:3, Informative)

    by swschrad ( 312009 ) on Monday April 18, 2005 @07:27PM (#12275820) Homepage Journal
    qwest has been selling naked dsl to all comers for over a year.

    where they can, of course. you have to meet the technical specs, generally being low bridge tap, no voice coil loads on the pair, and within some 16-18 kilofeet of the dslam.

    this unfortunately is the major limiting factor for DSL wannabuys; most lines were rebuilt or extended in the 60s and 70s, and coils were religion in those times every 6 kfeet apart.

    but you gotta try and agitate if you can't qualify to get your section rehabbed or another dslam put in remotely to get the service.
  • I already switch from DSL to Road Runner (Cable Modem). I tried to get the MEGA-Telco to give me just DSL (I prefer my neighbor to not recieve my data). I guess we both lose out now. At least I am up to 5Mb/sec downloads. :-)
  • Several months ago I got Verizon DSL during a hardware promo period, and had it installed for about 4 hours. I very quickly discovered that I couldn't use their outgoing mail servers unless my "From:" contained username@verizon.net (or some other verizon domain variant). Nope, it flat-out rejected it. Well, wtf??? As if nobody ever wants to send email "From" their other email addresses for work, personal domains, etc? So I uninstalled the equipment and returned it for a refund. Back to cable for me.

    I
  • So what's the catch?
  • I currently have Time Warner Road Runner. Its been very decent and reliable. However I think it is too pricey. I would switch to Verizon DSL, since it is $15 less, BUT... my understanding is that Verizon DSL is PPPOE, which I detest.

    So is this still true (I know it used to be in NYC) ? I hate to force my little BSD box to munge through that God-awful PPPOE protocol instead of a good-ol fashioned simple Ethernet/TCP-IP connection. But I sure wish TW/RR would lower their prices to be in line with Verizon DS

  • For this to make any difference. My old house was only 3000 feet from a remote DSLAM. I'm now over 21000 feet from the closest DSLAM. Verizon will give me service, and gladly take my money for it, but they advised me that my speeds would be pretty sad for DSL.

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