Best Buy On Telephone/Internet Bundle In Brattleboro?

Comments | 4

• Submitted by cgrotke on November 5, 2013 at 6:31 am

  choices

  I tend to like to keep these services separate, so that if one goes down there are other options. When everything is part of a package, the risk is that an outage for phone could also mean an outage for internet at the same time.

  Locally, the primary options available are Sovernet, Fairpoint, and Comcast. Each has offers and deals that come and go, usually with lower prices for longer contracts.

  Sovernet used to be local, but is owned by faraway investors now.

  Fairpoint used to be Verizon, (…used to be AT&T, used to be the Bell System) is your phone-based company. Their history is with telephone lines and DSL.

  Comcast (formerly Adelphia) is your cable-based company. Their history is with providing TV signals via cable.

  If your interest is phone and internet, and these companies more or less offer similar packages, maybe start with Fairpoint and see what kind of deals they can offer you.

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  • Submitted by tomaidh on November 5, 2013 at 9:43 am

    Fairpoint

    They have a “Bargain” basic phone service called “Limited use local”. You pay for every call, but the rates are cheap ( 5 cents/min in daytime, a half cent at night).
    Long distance rates are much higher. I use a cheap prepaid Trak Phone for distance calls.
    DSL is about $15/mo.
    You need to figure out where and when you need to phone.

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  • Submitted by alasky on November 5, 2013 at 5:24 pm

    If you get shared line DSL

    If you get shared line DSL from Fairpoint or SoVerNet, you are actually getting two different services over the same copper pair. Generally I agree with Chris that keeping services separate is a good idea, but if you get the type of DSL where you need a passive filter for your regular phone, it is not really combined. Your phone will still work, even if the power goes out and your modem goes dead.

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    • Submitted by JohnWilmerding on December 19, 2013 at 2:37 am

      Phone in Power Outage

      That is, your phone will still work if it is plugged into your wall phone jack (and the lines to your house are not down), ONLY if the phone is not cordless! Most cordless phones use a hard-wired base set to transmit a signal through the air to your phone. Some such sets may have backup batteries to keep the signal going in a power outage, but I am not aware of them.

      We usually keep a cheap, simple wired phone handy to plug into our phone jack when the power goes out (and our standard cordless phones don’t work). We all have cellphones in our home now too, but I know we are more fortunate than many in that way, and not everyone can use those at home due to service ‘dead spots’ etc.

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