| reply to creepndth
am i missing something? pardon my naivety here, i understand that you are all talking about the economics of buying up DSL customers, but i'm trying to follow a by-product of this conversation:
does the possibility exist that i could say talk to someone (pacbell?) and ask them if i can lease or buy my defunct northpoint circuit directly, in essence being my own DSL provider?
i'm already installed, i pay $x to the clec (?) for circuit and bandwidth and then whatever my normal ISP charges are...yes? no?
i'm sure they don't want to deal with every piddly customer directly, so i doubt this is a realistic scenario, but still... (can you smell the desperation?  ) |
Anon | Contractually speaking the DLECs have agreed to be the only point of contact between the ISPs/EUs and the ILECs. This means that they can't refer an ISP/EU to the ILEC to resolve an issue. They can't give out phone numbers. They can't tell you who to try to contact. Nada.
HOWEVER there is nothing stopping you from contacting your ILEC (PacBell in this case) without the assistance of your ISP. Of course, from talking to many EU's who've tried this, it can be a very frustrating and unrewarding experience as they call dept after dept that may or may not deal with DSL and may or may not know anything about the CLEC DSL depts which are separate from the ILEC DSL depts. On the other hand I've also talked to some VERY determined customers who persevered and went very high up in the ranks of their ILEC to get results. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't.
There is one little fly in the ointment that comes to mind. All DLEC, be it a CLEC or ILEC, want an ISP. Some make themselves the ISP while others (most) let actual ISPs handle it. I'm not sure which way PacBell works when it comes to DSL. I know Qwest uses ISPs and has their own internal ISP dept, too. Maybe PacBell would be willing to deal with you directly but you still have to get them or someone else to release your line from it's current DSL status.
In the end you'll just have to call PacBell and see which way the wind blows.
Hope that helps a bit.
Visionnaire |
