Reach Customers Online

Dangling Broadband From the Phone Stick

“Mr. Martikovic, 30, a junior architect who relies on a cellphone for his normal calling, says he never uses the desk phone – but he pays $360 a year to keep it hooked up.

“I have to pay for a service I’m never using,” he said.

He has no choice. His telephone company, SBC Communications, will not sell him high-speed Internet access unless he buys the phone service, too. That puts him in the same bind as many people around the country who want high-speed, or broadband, Internet access but no longer need a conventional telephone. Right now, their phone companies tend to have a “take it or leave it” attitude.”

From the New York Times (free registration required). As an aside, here in Connecticut we use SBC and are amused their voicemail can’t timestamp voicemail messages, even in 2005.
URLs:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/19/technology/19phone.html

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