Fergie's Tech Blog

AT&T Begins to Offer 'Naked DSL' in California

Jessie Seyfer writes in The Mercury News:

Is your home phone gathering dust? Thinking of ditching it? For AT&T DSL Internet access customers in California, getting rid of that home-phone line just got easier.

This month, AT&T quietly dropped its requirement that DSL customers must also pay for phone service. State regulators forced the company to make the change as a condition of its merger last year with SBC.

However, the savings from dropping a home phone line don't amount to much: AT&T is charging almost as much for its stand-alone, or ``naked'' DSL service as it does for DSL and a basic phone line. Naked DSL costs $44.99 a month, and a basic phone line and DSL together costs $47.99.

Yet analysts say this separation of phone line and DSL service signals a turning point in the unprecedented transformation occurring in the telecommunications world.

posted by Fergie @ 6/25/2006 06:31:00 AM