Now that we're no longer on a remote terminal unit and thus over a Verizon barrel, with out DSL choices limited to Verizon or nothing, we're switching from Verizon to Speakeasy, who can give us static IP on a residential DSL service, has tech support that knows what they're talking about instead of just reading off a script, actually cares about DSL service quality, and believes in the existence of computing platforms other than Windows and Mac. In the process of marking a theoretically-provisioned wire pair for Covad yesterday, a Verizon lineman managed to totally break ALL telco connectivity into the house. Which, since we have essentially no Nextel signal at the house, means we were totally isolated.
After I borrowed the neighbor's phone to file a trouble ticket, they sent a second tech out to fix it. He looked at the NTI, pronounced it a complete mess, said he wasn't trained on DSL, that the main office hadn't told him DSL was involved, and that didn't know what the problem was entirely, and left with a promise to have them send a DSL-trained tech out today.
Today, they sent out a third tech, who over the course of about three hours totally tore out and replaced everything between the pole and the outside wall. New drop, new NTI, new everything. The phone drop is no longer wrapped twice around the power lines, which surely has to make things work better.
As it happened, we ended up with one of the phone jacks having no dial tone to it. (The owners of this house had four lines into the house, since they ran a business out of their home.) That jack, which is one side of a dual jack right next to my desk, actually wound up connected to the pair provisioned for Covad, which is ideal -- I just switched my desk phone to the other side of the jack, and I can now plug the Broadxent DSL bridge in right there.
And the Broadxent seems to believe that it, in fact, has DSL carrier ....... time to call Speakeasy and find out whether our serice is theoretically active.