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."

About Time

[Cheirdal]

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.

US is ahead

[superpulpsicle]

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:Okay, quick question then:

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Verizon DSL has lower latency than Comcast Cable...

For P2P, that's no big deal. For Online Gaming, that's a huge deal...

Good, now ignore local monopolies.

[DarkSarin]

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).

Re:US is ahead

[Kiryat Malachi]

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:Good, now ignore local monopolies.

[ender81b]

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 somewhat happy that in my home state (Nebraska) Qwest offers Naked DSL for an extra $5 over their current prices. So, for instance with us as your ISP, it'd be $34 for a 256 symmetrical line, and $43 for a 1.5megabit/896 kbit line. Not bad really.

Of course, I'm stuck in the part of the state where we got alltel. Who don't believe in naked DSL and has fought/is fighitng Qwest over access to its market in court for the last bazillion years. And, to top it off, we have a retarded City Council that keeps blocking our local power company (one of the best in the country, thank god for small favors) from offering ISPs access to its (almost completely unused) SONET ring because it would "create a monopoly".

Sigh.

Love now or hate??

[danielsfca2]

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?

This is nothing new....

[Anonymous Coward]

A major corporation announces a service, but doesn't actually offer it until a year later? How is that news? Microsoft does it all the time! I recall that other phone companies (the smaller local ones) have been doing this in some way or another for about 18 months on average now. Of course, I could be mistaken....

Importance

[fm6]

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.

Re:Okay, quick question then:

[UWC]

DNS Servers (is that redundant?)

I wondered the same thing the other day. According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], 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.

You can get naked DSL in Canada from Bell

[Scott Tracy]

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 (which beats $35/month for a landline with just Call Display)

I have it and I hate it.

[syukton]

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

New Customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is interesting, but I wonder how they will handle new customers? I recently built a house in an area serviced by Verizon, and previously had SBC as my local telco. When I ordered Verizon phone service, I attempted to add DSL, but was told that you can't add such services until you've been a Verizon customer for at least a year...

Speakeasy, and preparing for this w/ one pair

[dacarr]

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).

DSL beats cable hands down!

[mattotoole]

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.

Re:It's about time!

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Verizon's operators don't know yet

[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.

Re:It's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Qwest has been offering this for at least 1 year now. Their sucess with it was one of the driving forces behind Verizons decision to offer it.

Re:US is ahead

[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.

Yeah, that's great but....

[Anonymous Coward]

...it ONLY applies if you use Verizon as an ISP. No thanks. Their TOS don't allow so much as a web server, no static IP unless you pay 3 times as much for "business service" (and you STILL can't run a server). Plus their customer service sucks.

Now, if they let me use my current third party ISP and allow me to cut the local phone service, then I have something I can actually use. But this? Yawn.

Comcast in Boston area: $53+

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in the Boston area. I pay $53.+ per month (total) for Comcast Internet service. And that's very minimum I can pay for Comcast internet service. Sure, I get the basic Cable TV included... but I don't want cable TV ... hell, local broadcast TV is great quality, and about 14 channels. Sadly, Comcast makes the "Basic Cable/Internet" package the least expensive way for me to get Internet service. $53+/month.

So I'm very very happy that a bundless Verizon package is available in my neighborhood. I plan to sign up next week, and get some better service (good-bye friggin' DNS issues!) and at a lower cost.

And to Comcast: screw you.

Too bad I'm too far from a DSLAM

[dmolavi]

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.