[conspire] ISP

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Tony Godshall (tony at of.net):

> The downside of raw bandwidth you to to pay AT&T for a voice line
> in order to get rawbw's services.

True, residential aDSL does depend on the telco PTSN local loop being
available.  We happen to have landline service for the house, so that's
OK in our usage scenario.

That is _not_ true of Raw Bandwidth's leased-line services, and I'm not
sure about its two types of ISDN service.

> Sonic.net is my primary ISP now- I like their Fusion product.  No cheap
> intro price- just a fair price from the get go and even periodic reductions
> in price.  Didn't get the 20mbps some people get (too far from the CO)
> but it's fine.  It Includes voice line with domestic long distance included.
> 
> Friggin AT&T, by the way, still provides the wire and claimed my line was
> hooked up even though they only hooked it up to a box three properties
> away around the corner behind a locked gate.  But Sonic got it AT&T all
> straightened out at no additional cost to me even though they had to send
> an employee to hang out at my location all day to do it.

So, it's still residential aDSL, and thus still requires that the telco
PTSN local loop be available, exactly the same as with Raw Bandwidth.
You just have a relatively lucky situation where it was active only to
the demarc point (perhaps for service to neighbours?) and the Sonic.net
employee was willing to lean on AT&T until they were no longer
gratuitously obstructive monopolists.

As it happens, Raw Bandwidth's Mike Durkin is likewise famous for having
among his core competencies his ability to lean on AT&T and force them
to get out of the way.

FWIW, a decade ago, I was rather wary of Sonic.net's treatment of its
own technical staff and related severe internal and service problems, 
though it's been a while since then:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011021195821/http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/Suite/7928/