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["Lyman Green" <daerid AT io.com>]

I've just had some interesting phone and email conversations with
BellSouth.  I wanted to see if anyone had any input on this.

I live in Chatham County, about as far east in Chatham County as you can
go.  I'm perhaps a mile or two from the Wake County line as the crow
flies.  We do not have cable on our road (it's a private dirt road) and as
far as I know it doesn't even extend down Rt. 751 (which is a mile away).

I was able some time ago to get Speakeasy to install IDSL
(144kbps/144Kbps) at the house.  They took the second phone line coming
into the house.  It's been very solid, relatively speaking.  It is not
full strength broadband, though.

Last year we decided that paying BellSouth for local phone service and MCI
for long distance was just ridiculous.  We have Cingular cell phones and
service at the house is good to excellent, so we cancelled our landline
completely.  The unused phone line still "works" in that I get a dialtone
and can dial 911 with a phone attached to the line.

Well, according to BellSouth's mailings and website, my address (and the
old phone number) qualify for FastAccess DSL.  This is a considerably
faster and nicer (and cheaper!!!) DSL service.  Unfortunately I've
discovered that you cannot order FastAccess DSL from Bellsouth without
having actual services of some kind from BellSouth.  The sales reps were
actually quite suprised to hear that I had any kind of DSL at all without
having an actual "working" (their definition of working is apparently that
I have to have a phone number from them and be paying their outrageous
prices for services) phone line.

I tried (via several people) to buy their FastAccess service, but they
couldn't/wouldn't open a sales ticket without a phone number.  Sigh.

The cheapest phone price I could get was 13.95 + taxes=21 a month for
phone service that I wouldn't even use, so I have for the moment discarded
that.

The technical BellSouth rep I spoke with via an email seemed to be in
agreement with what I know to be true: one does NOT have to have a
functional phone line to get DSL service.  If I did have to have that my
IDSL from Speakeasy wouldn't be working.  And it does continue to work.

So I'm going to approach Speakeasy (again, I asked them this right after I
saw that FastAccess was supposedly available) and see if they can
"upgrade" my connection.  I'd be happy to continue paying them for
service, but maybe a bit less and a faster connection would make me happy.

Does this sound stupid?  Is there some technical aspect to this I'm
missing or does this sound like typical phone company BS (so to speak)?

Lyman Green