Jack (Decker),
Thanks for continuing with the newsgroup. I want to add a tidbit that
Verizon announced last Friday, but that seems to have been lost in the
shuffle of merger speculation. Verizon reportedly plans to unbundled
DSL for over 80% of their customers, potentially this year. That
would allow Verizon customers to replace their POTS lines with DSL and
VoIP if they want.
"Verizon expects "that in the not-too-distant future that you will be
able to get Verizon DSL without getting Verizon phone service," said
Tom Tauke, Verizon executive vice president for public affairs and
communications. "It's a technological issue, it's not a marketing
issue." "From a very practical perspective, we would like to be able
to offer the DSL service on a stand-alone basis and the effort is
being made to bring that about as rapidly as possible," he said.
"Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe said so-called "naked DSL" could be
offered potentially later this year but noted that subscribers to its
service via fiber-optic lines, FiOS, could get stand-alone broadband
now. Almost 1 million homes are now served by Verizon's fiber network
but the company has targeted reaching 3 million homes by the end of
the year. Roughly 80 percent of Verizon's 53 million traditional lines
are capable of offering DSL."
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?storyID=7545839&type=technologyNews
Bob
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It would be very interesting if SBC
decided to go the same way: DSL with no phone service requirements,
but it is very unlikely; they just can't get their act together to
accomplish that. PAT]
R Collinge (rcollinge@yahoo.com)