Comments on: DSL wars come down to a battle of the bundles

Some broadband pricing deals come bundled with complete telephone packages, but are they really a bargain?

Clarifications

A couple of clarifications. Vonage is mentioned in the article as $24.95 for voice, but fails to mention that that too must be tied to another offer; e.g., broadband from another carrier adding another approximate $45 to the mix, bringing the total to the same as SBC offer of $70. In addition Verizon is offering in NY a $29.95 standalone offer for DSL where customer gets choice of DSL speed from 1.5-3.0; over 30% savings over cable bundle in NY - no promo, this is standard list.

Alternative

Go for Cox all in one package: you can get basic cable, phone n internet service for cheaper pricee.

[roberts2424]

Bell South

What's also interesting is that Bell South and select other
companies won't let you subscribe to their DSL services unless
you have a phone line with them. In other words, you can't get
DSL without a Bell SOuth phone line. Their DSL service is truly
remarkable but who needs all that other stuff? Our household is
discussing jumping ship and going with Cable Broadband just to
cut expenses, something we'd like to avoid since we like our
current DSL service.

Qwest does not want to sell DSL

I just went thru a very frustrating evaluation of the High Speed access options for our home. We live in an upper middle class area of Phoenix AZ and wanted something better than dialup. Right now we have Qwest for home phone, ATT long distance & dialup internet, and Direct TV. We wanted to stick with one of these companies. Direct TV internet priced itself out of the evaluation. ATT doesn't offer DSL in our area so I went to Qwest. Over a two week period in October - after alot of phone calls and pushing for answers I found that Qwest does not want the business. It seems they wired the area years ago with fiber optic cable and have decided that if you want more than phone you WILL use the fiber optic cable - on their terms. You HAVE to rent a modem from them (it's a special fiber optic modem)you have to take MSN, and they do NOT support home networks - and if you have the guts to install it on your own they will not give you any tech support. And to top it off the technician would not give me any indication of the download/upload speed! They would hook up the first computer in the home for $9.99 (promotional rate) but the second and additional computers are $99 each! They gratiously will allow you up to 4 computers in a household to use the connection for the same monthly rate but they are each separately connected to the internet and can not be networked together. They really want you to buy your cable tv from them too. I told them that I now understand why so few people in the local school directory have a Qwest or MSN email address and Cox has the majority. I am planning to call Cox and set up phone and internet from them and eliminate both Qwest and ATT. We are not willing to give up Direct TV so Cox is not going to get that business.

[LANjackal]

Cable + VoIP

Phone company being obstinate? Simple solution: get cable internet access and VoIP. If you're not a cable TV subscriber, your bill will be only $5 or so more than if you were. However, you won't be tied to an expensive landline service, and your internet access will be considerably faster than with DSL. Go cable!!!