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Old 11-26-2008, 03:51 AM   #1
flanna.kersting

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Default Telecom Taxes & Fees...
Cost of dialtone: $15
Taxes & Fees: $15

I wanted to ditch my dialtone and keep my DSL, but they won't let me. Guess its time I call Time Warner back. My last bill from the phone company was $70.

Also, if my co-workers don't keep making weird/annoying noises I'm gonna go postal. I put in a move request to GTFO this room, but nothing has happened yet.

Day 42: The room feels like its closing in on me. I hear the sounds of farm animals coming from the nearby cubicles. I'm hungry. I hope UPS delivers that propane grill and butcher's knife set that I ordered. I wrote some e-mails to the farmer today... I told him I think the sheep are plotting against him.
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Old 11-26-2008, 03:56 AM   #2
unatkot

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What's dialtone?

Why do you want your co-workers to make weird/annoying noises?
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Old 11-26-2008, 05:15 AM   #3
flanna.kersting

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What's dialtone?

Why do you want your co-workers to make weird/annoying noises?
What I meant wasn't if they don't stop. But my brain is so fried today that I totally botched that. That's how much of a headache I have. Between them and these special assignments I'm about to walk out that door and never look back.

Dialtone = plain old telephone service. No caller ID, nothing. To just get local dialtone with no bells and whistles it costs you as much in taxes and fees as it does for the service itself.

Setting up Time Warner install as we speak. My friend has it, and he says his 15meg service runs rock solid at 18 megs. No problems at all. My $70 10meg service is actually after $30 in discounts... $45/mo for 7meg cable seems fair.

Dunno why I even got the 10meg. I just play WoW, and do basic surfing. Guess I just wanted to give my e-peen some enzyte.
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Old 11-26-2008, 07:20 AM   #4
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Phone companies are bad mmmk
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Old 11-26-2008, 09:42 PM   #5
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Cost of dialtone: $15
Taxes & Fees: $15

I wanted to ditch my dialtone and keep my DSL, but they won't let me. Guess its time I call Time Warner back. My last bill from the phone company was $70.

Also, if my co-workers don't keep making weird/annoying noises I'm gonna go postal. I put in a move request to GTFO this room, but nothing has happened yet.

Day 42: The room feels like its closing in on me. I hear the sounds of farm animals coming from the nearby cubicles. I'm hungry. I hope UPS delivers that propane grill and butcher's knife set that I ordered. I wrote some e-mails to the farmer today... I told him I think the sheep are plotting against him.
I'm going to assume no knowledge of phone systems here, so bare with me. . .

You can't cut off POTS and keep DSL. The DSL signal is multiplexed over the phone line; to cut off POTS, you have to actually disconnect the line at the local DSLAM/CLEC (I think that's what they're called). It's just like when you get cable internet service, you get basic cable with it. Due to the fact the internet service is overlaid onto existing infrastructure, they can only separate out what's overlaid.

It's like a car; you have to get the base model, then you can lay stuff on top of it. You can't take away the base model and have the other stuff without it.

Copacetic?

And this is where (relating to another conversation) monopolies are bad. You can thank the telephone monopoly in your area for lack of innovation to fix this issue. What are you going to do? Go with another provider you can't get to get a cheaper phone price? No. You'll suck it up and keep paying $70 for something you don't need because the phone company doesn't want to invest in technology to allow one without the other. (which, sadly, only requires a voice-range filter in the case of DSL).
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Old 11-26-2008, 09:52 PM   #6
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It's just like when you get cable internet service, you get basic cable with it.

No you don't....at least here you don't. We've got cable internet and don't have any other cable service with it, apart from the phone which we chose to have.
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Old 11-26-2008, 10:27 PM   #7
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You can't cut off POTS and keep DSL.
Its commonly referred to as dry line, or with my telco Direct HSI. For certain reasons I am ineligible. There's no technical limitation. They just want to shove the whole thing down your throat to make more money. And the ONLY way to get dry line DSL from most companies is when you threaten to cancel. Its a retentions/save only type of offer. Sort of like those low minute low cost cell plans that some carriers offer to people who want to cancel.

As for the cable comparison its $46.95/mo for TWC's 7 meg service. No TV/Phone required. No taxes either, since HSI isn't taxed here. Its $40/mo for 15 meg if you get their cable or their phone.

All I need is internet and my cell phone. The only time I've touched my land line in the past few months was to call Onkyo's tech support. Even my new Dish Network receiver is internet capable, so I no longer need to hook it to a phone line.

Since my friend reports 100% satisfaction with TWC's 15 meg service I'm gonna give em a shot. No contract and 30 day money back guarantee. Which I used last year when I dropped them in under a month. I'm still angry that they drilled through the side of the house rather than the basement, but maybe over the past year they've fixed their issues. For $57 I could get 15 meg. Beats the $70/mo I'm paying for my 10 meg DSL + home phone when I don't want the home phone.

In fact, this whole thing started because years ago I ordered a static IP to get them to take me off a faulty piece of equipment. They then tried to ninja-bill me for $15 to remove the static IP. Never told me about the fee. That was the last straw. $150 I've spent because they were too lazy to move me off a faulty port.

I will say one nice thing about TWC. Even when I couldn't get a speed test to break 56k speeds the ping was a solid 30ms. There was no packet loss, and it was extremely smooth. Perfect for VoIP. Its just the speed was crap for some reason. I guess they've got that fixed if he's pulling 18's on speed tests.
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Old 11-26-2008, 11:03 PM   #8
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You get Bellsouth (AT&T) where you are at? We have FastAccess DSL with no land line connected (it cost $5 more, but the phone line is $18 so yeah its worth it).
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Old 11-26-2008, 11:11 PM   #9
flanna.kersting

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I'm in Embarq territory.
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Old 11-26-2008, 11:22 PM   #10
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No you don't....at least here you don't. We've got cable internet and don't have any other cable service with it, apart from the phone which we chose to have.
You've physically hooked up a TV to your cable line and confirmed this?
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Old 11-26-2008, 11:27 PM   #11
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You've physically hooked up a TV to your cable line and confirmed this?
You can't just hook up the cable to the TV you need a decoder box first which we don't have. The point is we're not paying for any kind of cable TV service.
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Old 11-27-2008, 05:47 AM   #12
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I currently have the dryloop service, (DSL with no phoneline from AT&T) and before that I had cable internet without any tv services.
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Old 11-27-2008, 09:42 AM   #13
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Yup you can get DSL with no dial tone.

In Australia it's called "naked DSL".

I'm on naked DSL! They typically bundle it with a cheap unlimited VoIP service.[thumbup]

Bare in mind, unless the ISP has DSLAMS capable of providing this, then you must be connected to a traditional PSTN phone line. In Australia the line rental for this line is $30 a month without making any calls. It's reduculious. If you go naked you avoid paing $30 for nothing.
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Old 11-27-2008, 09:57 AM   #14
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Its commonly referred to as dry line, or with my telco Direct HSI. For certain reasons I am ineligible. There's no technical limitation. They just want to shove the whole thing down your throat to make more money.
Correct, though I think the Verizon salesperson I talked to called it a 'dry loop' but at least here, you can sign right up just for DSL, no need for the landline service. I remember several years back when I had DSL setup at my parents house and back then, I also had a regular land line, but the bills were mailed separately. But back then, they made you take both services, whereas lately they've changed that because there's more and more people using cell-phones only and they don't want to cripple themselves anymore.

And I even knew several years ago that DSL service works just fine even without the land line being active, because one time I fell behind on my payments for my phone service, but was still up to date on my DSL (like I said they were billed & mailed separately) and ended up having my phone service shut off. My DSL still worked fine....for two weeks anyway, when they turned off my DSL without warning, and told me when I called them up that you needed both. I was pretty annoyed, because back then I had my cell-phone, and my land-line did absolutely nothing, I always had tons of telemarketers and such calling me and waking me up starting at 9AM every day (I worked the 4-12 shift back then and stayed up late afterwards) until I finally unhooked my land phone for good.

But like I said, it's completely different now in most areas.
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Old 11-27-2008, 10:01 AM   #15
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You can't just hook up the cable to the TV you need a decoder box first which we don't have. The point is we're not paying for any kind of cable TV service.
This is true, at least now. My friend had cable internet only through Adelphia something like 5 years ago, and the contractor who came to hook it up even told him that he could just use a cable splitter to split the signal to the TV and get free cable that way. However, nowadays they got smart & they filter the signals separately. You don't NEED a cable box if you pay for cable just to watch it on your TV (at least not here) but you won't have access to any of the other stuff like the show listings, on demand, etc.
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Old 11-27-2008, 08:53 PM   #16
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You can't just hook up the cable to the TV you need a decoder box first which we don't have. The point is we're not paying for any kind of cable TV service.
It's different in America. You can hook a TV straight to the cable without a decoder box (those things are really only needed for digital TV and HDTV) and you can get basic cable without paying for it as long as you have high speed.

Granted, the cable company will tell you that you can't just hook up a TV for some retarded reason, but you can. I don't know if you all have broadcast TV in the UK, but generally that's all basic cable is here; the broadcast TV stations that you could get with an antenna (and maybe a couple of others).

Anyway, you never did answer if you actually tried to hook up a TV or just took the TV company's word that it wouldn't work.
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Old 11-27-2008, 09:11 PM   #17
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It's different in America. You can hook a TV straight to the cable without a decoder box (those things are really only needed for digital TV and HDTV) and you can get basic cable without paying for it as long as you have high speed.

Granted, the cable company will tell you that you can't just hook up a TV for some retarded reason, but you can. I don't know if you all have broadcast TV in the UK, but generally that's all basic cable is here; the broadcast TV stations that you could get with an antenna (and maybe a couple of others).

Anyway, you never did answer if you actually tried to hook up a TV or just took the TV company's word that it wouldn't work.
As far as I know all cable TV over is here is now digital so you still need a decoder box to be able to watch it. And anyway the connection on the end of the cable is completely different from that used for the TV's aerial input so it would be impossible to connect it, at least not without swapping the connection for one that is the same.

And I did answer your question: I said you need a decoder box to watch cable TV which we don't have ergo I haven't tried it.
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Old 11-27-2008, 09:31 PM   #18
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Acable is completely different from that used for the TV's aerial input
Well, our cable over here is the same kind of connection. It's just a coax type connection, which is the same used for aerial connections.
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Old 11-27-2008, 09:47 PM   #19
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As far as I know all cable TV over is here is now digital so you still need a decoder box to be able to watch it. And anyway the connection on the end of the cable is completely different from that used for the TV's aerial input so it would be impossible to connect it, at least not without swapping the connection for one that is the same.

And I did answer your question: I said you need a decoder box to watch cable TV which we don't have ergo I haven't tried it.
Hrm, we're going over to digital here in the states, soon, but you only need a converter box for older TVs over the air. Interesting. . .

Do you guys hook up your CATV via the component (video/audio) hookups then?

Well, our cable over here is the same kind of connection. It's just a coax type connection, which is the same used for aerial connections. And this is why I'm asking. . .it's all the same junk for us. Your antenna hooks up to the coaxial cable hookup. Same place your cable TV can hook into.
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Old 11-27-2008, 10:22 PM   #20
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[color=red]Hrm, we're going over to digital here in the states, soon, but you only need a converter box for older TVs over the air. Interesting. . .
You mean you can plug a digital cable service directly in to your TV and receive a picture?

Do you guys hook up your CATV via the component (video/audio) hookups then? Component connections aren't very common over here, we generally have SCART which usually carries an RGB or composite signal. That's what's probably used to connect a cable box to a TV. Either that or an RF (aerial) lead, but that doesn't come straight from the cable connection, it has to go to the cable box first and then the cable box sends a signal to the RF socket. Although I'm not really sure as we've never had cable TV (my brother has though); I'm just going by how we connect our Sky (satellite) box before we had HD.


And this is why I'm asking. . .it's all the same junk for us. Your antenna hooks up to the coaxial cable hookup. Same place your cable TV can hook into. This is the type of connector on our cable


This is the type of connector used on the aerial connection of a TV


It's the same type of cable but with a different connector.
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