Well, to close out this thread, Verizon lost yet another landline customer. The copper pairs coming to my house are now unplugged at the NID. Our internet and phone are now traveling across coax. I must say, 15MB download speed ROCKS!!!
I guess the times are a changing. In the 90's I had 3 phone lines for home, work and dial-up. In the early 00's I had 2 lines, voice and dial-up, at least until the day DSL finally became available at our address. We've only required 1 line since then.
I would have even kept the voice line if the price was reasonable. But $60/month just seems insane in this day and age. I've also called and begged Verizon for years to make faster download speeds available here, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
Adios Verizon...