Consumer Note - we changed our phone provider

Not a big deal, but I thought its something we all face on a regular basis. I'm not a cantidate to drop our land lines and go wireless. Its not cost effective, I'm concerned about the loss of our land phone number and its not worth the hassle.

What prompted the change? A number of things.

First, for some magic reason, we can get DSLnow. I think we are still 17000 to 18000 feet from the Marlton and Moorestown CO's, but something changed in Mount Laurel and I'm liking it.

Next, I had AT&T as our long distance carrier. Last time I checked, they had the best International plan and fewer billing issues than MCI and others. I was wrong. Billing is months behind and, to top it off, time for each call is off by a factor of 10. In other words, when I make a five minute phone call, it shows up as 50 minutes. Also, calls within NJ and to Philadelphia are $.20/min. The big reason I had AT&T was international calling. For $3/month, we can call Ireland and England for 11 cents and 9 cents a minute respectively. Prior to my AT&T contract, it appears I was slammed and didn't have a default long distance carrier. In this situation, your randomly assigned a LD carrier and you have no default plan. I paid something like $1/min for a call to Ireland. This made my head hurt and I vowed to never, ever let this happen again.

Last, we have Verizon DSL. Combining voice and data gave