AT&T West → [General] latest DSL price in Northern California

I was a very early AT&T DSL customer in Sacramento (Is that what call a "legacy" customer?). Heck, I even have a static IP address.
In 1999, they charged $40/month for "FasTrak ADSL Service Residence" with "ADSL Basic” 384kbps up / 128Kbps down.

Over the years, the price went up and down, probably due to competitive forces. In fact, the cost bounced around quite a lot. Sometimes they had a ritual where you periodically called up and threatened to cancel, so they "retained" you with some discount that would only last 6 or 12 months, and you had to do that all over again.

Only one year ago, in July 2011, I noticed that I was paying the $35 list price for “HSI Pro 1”, so I called them up and they gave me a yearlong $23.05 discount for a total of 11.95/month. Then in April, they raised the list price to $38, and in August eliminated the discount. So my monthly DSL cost went from $11.95 in April 2012 to $38 in August 2012 (yes, a 318% increase).

When I called AT&T last week to see what they could do, the best they would offer was a $15 discount for the next 12 months, which means a monthly cost of $23 – still a 92% increase from what I paid just 5 months ago. Now that discount would only apply for the next 12 months, with a $180 early termination fee.

BTW, this is NOT U-verse, just regular copper wire to a phone line with DSL. Although the neighborhood is crawling with AT&T door-to-door salespeople, my neighbors who tried U-verse all dumped it and switched to Comcast; but they watch a lot of TV, and I watch so little TV that I am happy to get free OTA broadcast TV with fewer channels but excellent HD images.

The DSL line is reliable enough, with speeds of 2.44 Mbps down and 410 Kbps up. They said that I am too far from the CO to go up to another speed tier. I am not worried about hitting the 150GB monthly data cap.

The phone portion of the bill is around $37, so with this new DSL price and discount the total should be around $60.

Can anyone suggest a method to get them down below $23 for DSL? Alternatively, is there a better way to approach this whole thing?

Sorry about the longish post, I did not intend to rant. I appreciate very much any advice from the incredibly knowledgeable and generous experts at this site.

Dump the ATT crooks and switch to VoIP.
Try Dslextreme and dry line, or switch to Comcrap.
There are no real choices.

You have a grandfathered static IP address? If you value that, do not seek any kind of service change, be it U-verse Internet, or even a speed upgrade. Do that, and you will lose your static IP address forever.

They are especially tight about discounting legacy ADSL service now. They would like to decommission their ADSL hardware, so they are aggressively pushing customers to their new IPDSLAM ADSL2+/VDSL ("U-verse Internet") service. That is where the discounts are; but you will lose your static IP address if you jump.

You can probably get decent promotional prices from an ADSL reseller, such as DSL Extreme, or Sonic.net, LLC, if they service your area. It is still just ADSL, with the same speed/distance limitations. But those CLECs have some leeway for introductory pricing. And you will lose your static IP address if you switch to a CLEC DSL provider.

Call the customer service number on your bill. Tell them you are considering switching carriers and want to speak to the retention department. Be adamant that you be transferred to retention. Typically, the retention department can put fairly good pricing on your account. They have no direct number, so you will have to be transferred after your call is initially answered.

As this entails a simple switch in the promo code on your account, it should have zero effect on your static IP address, or the speed of your service.

It looks like another DSL provider in our area has a 12 month introductory price of $12.95/month for 768k/384k, and either 1500/384 or 3000/512 (IP address not static) for $14.95 per month.

I wonder if one could mention this to the retention department and would the retention folks match that price for ones account for 12 months?

It looks like the $14.95 price jumps to $44.95 for static IP addresses.

In the case of the business retention department, they don' price match. I have no clue how residential works.