[Eug-lug] Local dial tone providers - Qwest alternatives?

[Alan]

Linux Rocks! wrote:
> Alan,
> 	If you find a solution, please let us know.... Ive dealt with qwest/uswest 
> for a long time, but not for a few years now. I hate them. Ive had awful 
> problems in the past with them. Ive found that if you go with other local 
> providers that it just ends up costing more so that qwest can still get thier 
> cut. Im currently using a cell phone for my regular phone.
> 
> Jamie

Yeah, I've looked at cell phones, but for my household, they don't make 
economical sense, mainly because I'd need two and that pushes the cost 
far above what I give Qwest. And while the main motivation for this is 
to avoid giving Qwest any of my money, giving twice the amount to 
someone else doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.

I did some research last night into this:
The plan I cooked up was Vonage over whoever is that does WISP in 
Eugene(willamette.net, I think).
The downsides to Vonage are mainly the lack of 541 numbers. This isn't a 
huge concern for me, since I don't know anyone in town that would call 
me anyway. heh. An upside is that I could get an 845(NY) number which 
would enable both our parents to call us "locally".
And for most people we know, calling a 503(1?) Portland number is just 
as LD as calling an 845 NY number.

The WISP is a bigger problem, since if the hills I think are the Coburg 
  hills are, in fact, the Coburg hills, I don't have LOS to them.
This lead me to Comcast, the folks who want $15 more for worse upstream 
than I get from Qwest.
 From there, I went to Speakeasy. Their online service app told me I 
could only qualify for IDSL, which I find odd, since I'm using ADSL from 
Qwest right now. I'll have to give them a call later, but if anyone is 
using them in Eugene right now, speak up.

I've looked at Skype, but since most of our calls are incoming, I don't 
think it will fit the bill for what we need.


That's the run-down so far, if anyone has any additional ideas, 
suggestions, etc, do chime in.

-ajb