DSL Phone Static Question for Lineman?

[quicksandfarmer]

My house is on a one-lane dead end road. There are only five houses past us. Our phone line was put in in the mid-70's. We've never been able to get anything better than DSL (and that was only a few years ago). Can't get features like caller ID or call forwarding. There is always a hum on the line. Over time the hum gets worse, then I call Verizon and a guy comes out and bangs on the poles for a while and it's not so bad for a little bit.

We are also only 3 miles from the town's cell phone tower. Last I got a Mobley and switched my land line number to Google Voice and discontinued land line service. I got an Obi device, which allows me to receive Google Voice calls over the Internet and plugs into my old analog phones. It costs half as much per month, the internet service is at least ten times as fast, and phone service is flawless. Google Voice also has a ton of features that we didn't have before.

I'm glad to be done with Verizon and I'm sure they're glad to be done with me!

 

[drssg]

If cable is available for your area, you should be able to buy just internet service through them. That’s what I do - TV is from an antenna.

Our landline also had terrible static issues, but it was related to wet weather. Our cable connection has been quite reliable.

 

[MossRoad]

When we had DSL, we had that same problem. At the time, I had two lines in the house. One was our personal line. The 2nd was a centrex line from my employer (I had a 4 digit work extension to my house). They wanted me on call 24/7 so I told them to buy me a phone line. Centex line was like $11 per month for them, so that was cheaper than a standard line, so that's what I got. I had a net modem on the centrex line. I could make calls in and out on that line. If the net modem detected network activity on my home PC, it would auto-switch to dial up modem and call a modem at my employer. If I picked up the phone, it would drop the data connection. When I hung up, it would restor the data connection. Ahhh.... good old 56.6. :laughing:

Anyhow, our DSL was over our personal line. It got staticky after a year or so. There were 4 pairs coming into the house from the street underground. So they moved it to another pair and all was well for another year. Then that got staticky, and they ran a new 4 pair line overhead and that took care of that. I still use those pairs for our internet and phone service today. The centrex went away about 10 years ago when I got a VPN to work, a stipend for home internet service, and company paid cell phone.

Just this past Sunday, I was going through my electronics tubs, and threw out three DSL filters. There's one filter with two ports, one for the phone and one for the DSL modem. The other two only had one port each, for phone only.

 

[ultrarunner]

Comcast is on the street.... never had it.

The neighbors with cell use a repeater that goes through their cable if I understand... the terrain in this area makes for poor cell reception... it only affects about 50 homes and shows up on the "Coverage" maps... this is why I don't have a personal cell.

What is interesting is I can get 50+ over the air TV stations with cheap rabbit ears but cell coverage is spotty at best.