[Discuss] Verizon Landline Strikes Again

[Mike Small]

Bouman MC <boumanmcc at gmail.com> writes:

> Fact1: I choose dial up landline service as a brass tacks answer to
> hacking: Hacking can't happen, unless someone climbs a pole.
> Fact 2: Verizon has disconnected dial up landline without admitting it to
> anyone. But they are still billing.
> Result: As I write, landline dial up to all search engines (but not other
> web sites) has been blocked to my internet connection. I can send but not
> receive mail. This is an outrage. The customer service in India can't speak
> our language and verizon pretends that they're gonna "fix" it, except that
> they can't and just transfer you to someone else. By the way, I don't need
> a technican, cust support and any other clown at the end of an 800 line.
>
> Yes, I have wireless (which is how you got this message) but that's not the
> point. When are We, the People going to stand up for our rights in this
> country and start running it again, instead of letting the oligarchy that
> is draining our taxes and right of access run over us with a tank? Remember
> the Iron Curtain? Remember Radio Free Europe? What's the difference between
> then and now?
>
> Think about it. Hard.


SDF has local phone numbers. You could get an account with them and use
their numbers instead of connecting to Verizon. They're definitely not
the oligarchy. Are there still CLECs in MA? If so perhaps you could
completely dump Verizon.

http://sdf.org/?dialup

I just looked and theworld still has dialup too, $5/mth.  Not very much
disk space in their shell/mail accounts, though.

How do you find browsing the web with dialup? Is it mostly doable
(before whatever changed with Verizon)? I'm thinking about this option
if my roommate moves out. Most of what needs high bandwidth is stuff I
don't want to see or can get another way, I think.  I'd think with
aggressive noscript, adblock and requestpolicy settings it might be
okay.  And I could say to my sister, "sorry, I have only dialup now, so
I can't watch those 10 youtube videos you sent me."  Would rdp over a
vpn be possible with dialup? I know rdesktop has "experience" settings
nominally for a 56 kbps modem, but I wonder if that works acceptably
well in practice.

-- 
Mike Small
smallm at panix.com