Telcos can provide Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) to anyone who wants it. You will get dial tone even if you live so far out in the country that if you leave your windows open at night the raccoon farts blow the candles out. But ask the same telcos to provide those same customers bandwidth - well, that's a whole different story.

I live that and am a prime example of a customer that is beyond the reach. Our provider is Verizon. We live about 3 miles from town, and our 2 POTS circuits are fed from a remote that is 10,000 feet from the house. The remote is fed by T1 circuits and not fiber, so ADSL is beyond the reach for me and another 125 or so neighbors in the area. Comcast, the cable company, doesn't want to have anything to do with us as we wouldn't provide enough revenue to make it worthwhile.

If we want service other than dial tone, we have 2 choices: satellite TV and satellite DSL. The satellite TV is fine, and the satellite DSL is very expensive and about half the speed of smell. Despite all their claims of speed, they are just that - claims. We've had them out multiple times to improve service but nothing came of it. We even switched providers costing us over $100 for equipment that we now own and $120 per month ongoing service fee. You can get it cheaper but it's even slower - imagine paying more than$120 per month and getting speed barely above dial up. My wife has a Sprint air card and even it is faster than the satellite. The only difference from dial up is that satellite DSL is on all the time.

I and my neighbors get the following story from Verizon over and over: "We currently do not have ADSL available in your area. We will let you know when it is available." I have talked to everyone in Verizon from the Network VP on down and they simply say that it is not cost effective to serve us.

Herein lies the crux: POTS customers nationwide have provided to all telcos the revenue to invest in ADSL and The Triple Play. To remain "competitive", these telcos are dumping us customers that are beyond the reach of their service by the car load. Often it simply wouldn't be that expensive to reach us.

As the nation moves to home offices, many, many people like me would gladly pay a little extra to get broadband service. Most of us could care less about The Triple Play. We just want good Internet service.

Abuse of the POTS customer will cost telcos in the long run because many of us have substantial businesses we are trying to run. Someone will eventually take care of us and I doubt it will be Verizon. Hey, Verizon and others like you, remember this: the customer who is forced to look for bandwidth from the competitor will shift voice service too if that bandwidth provider has the feature. Telcos are already feeling the pressure. Cables that showed an 89 to 90% fill are down to less than 50%. This is especially true in any area where there is existing cable trouble that has not been repaired.

I and a lot of customers who want bandwidth are looking for a plausible solution to this ever growing problem. What is your take on it? Please give us your comments and solutions.

Donald