1.

Clever Dude
April 24th, 2007 at 10:56 am

I pay $26.99 each month for Verizon Dry Loop DSL (768kbps speed). It makes me really consider asking Comcast for a $30 per month deal on cable internet. VOIP just doesn’t work well on the slower DSL speeds.

Also, I have to pay for Dry Loop via credit card (or check card) rather than get billed. I don’t really like allowing Verizon direct access to my card, but it seems like a necessary evil considering I would otherwise need to pay $40+ per month for the additional land line service.

2.

Nick
April 24th, 2007 at 1:41 pm

Verizon (and perhaps other land-line companies) offers cheap, limited-minute plans for under $20/month that you can use to get packaged DSL plans. This is another alternative for people who need limited use of a land-line phone or simply don’t want to go the dry loop route.

3.

Master Allan
April 24th, 2007 at 10:38 pm

Following up on what Nick said…

I called SBC (now AT&T) in Texas and signed up for DSL and added metered service as my phone line. Metered or sometimes Measured is a low cost option rarely advertised and it cost me about $10 / month. I was limited to 25 incoming/outgoing calls a month, + 8 cents a call after the 25. I never used the analog phone but not only did it work but it was cheaper than regular phone service at about $25-$30 / month. Thankfully I now have QWEST and naked DSL.

I also moved into an apartment complex that was serviced by “Verizon Avenue”. For $35 / month, month-to-month, no contracts, you had 1.5Mbps download, no phone service needed. The apartment was wired differently, two RJ-11 phone jacks instead of one on the panel. Oddly I decided I wanted phone service and would use the top jack but the interior wiring was defective. I had a DSL modem plugged into one jack, and the other voice phone service jack was dead and never worked. Weird!

4.

Clever Dude
May 9th, 2007 at 11:33 pm

Nick, regarding the discounted options for phone service through Verizon, I tried their limited plan (the most basic where you paid 8 cents per call), but for some reason kept getting charged for about 100 calls per month. We only ever checked our verizon voicemail once or twice a week, so we inevitably had to call verizon to get a correction every month. Even after the correction, the bills ran about $15-20 a month, for a plan that was advertised for about $6. They tacked on so many charges, fees and taxes that it cost as much as Vonage’s 500 minute plan.

That was 3 years ago, and I switched to cable modem and vonage. Comcast was running $30 per month for a year, so it was a better deal at the time (since VOIP isn’t too smooth or clear on 768kbps DSL).

5.

Pams
June 19th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

I have dsl for over a year without a dial tone. We had a bod rain storm in late April (Philadelphia, Pa) and the line went down. I called verizon and the next morning it was back up. 2 weeks later it rained again the line went down. Now Verizon tells me I can’t get the internet because I don’t have a dial tone and they can’t explain how I’ve had it for more than a year without one. We talked and I agreed to the dry-loop it took 3 1/2 weeks to set up before they called me with a computer generated message letting me know my Dsl Dry Loop was up and running. I was told to turn all computers off make sure the jack was plugged in and reset the router. I still am unable to get the dry-loop to work. Verizon wants me to believe its the line in my home but if nothing is surpose to change then my line inside are fine. Is there something else I need to do from the computer to recognize the line? Do I need to ping the IP address for the line?
Can some on e help.

6.

Jatin
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 am

I live in Bay Area CA. You are right. I called ATT but got lot of run around and no answer. A lady confirmed $23.99(express) and $28.99(pro) but she was in mid-west. So she transferred me to another number for CA. They checked availability and asked $45.99 for express and $49.99 for Pro. Looks like they are playing game so people stay stuck to their land line.

7.

Lorraine
October 27th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

Thank you for this article. I just ordered VOIP service and want to use my current phone number. My current phone service is with AT&T, and my DSL service is with Verizon. Does this mean I already have a dry loop? When my AT&Tservice is discontinued by the VOIP service will the Verizon DSL service remain? Can I then port my current phone number to my VOIP service.

Thanks,
Lorraine

8.

Nick
October 28th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

Lorraine,

Thanks for your comment. Your situation is pretty unique, but I’ll do my best to answer your question.

You may or may not currently be on a dry loop because you have a home phone line. I’m guessing you had the AT&T phone line first, then added the Verizon DSL line later. When you got the Verizon DSL, they probably looked first to see if you had a home phone line, saw that you did, were disappointed that it wasn’t with them, maybe tried to get you to switch your land line to Verizon, and then activated your DSL service along your existing home phone line.

Your situation is similar to how some people have one company that generates the electricity and another that supplies it to their home and maintains the power lines. In this case, AT&T provides the land line Verizon *may* need for its DSL service. I say “may” because Verizon may be using that AT&T phone line, or it may be that Verizon has you on a dry loop. In order to find out for sure, you’ll have to call Verizon and ask.

When you call Verizon, ask them if you are currently on a dry loop. If they say yes, then feel free to drop your AT&T land line and your VOIP service should work just fine with the Verizon DSL. If they say no, ask them if you are eligible for a dry loop. If they say that you are eligible (and assuming they’re telling the truth that you’re currently not on dry loop), you may need to activate dry loop service before dropping your AT&T landline. If they say you are not currently on AND not eligible for dry loop DSL, you’re probably stuck with the AT&T land line if you want to keep your DSL… that is, unless Verizon is lying about their dry loop availability which, as you’ve seen from my article on the topic, is entirely possible. Unfortunately the only group that can tell you if Verizon is lying is—you guessed it—Verizon!

I hope that helps and wasn’t too confusing.

9.

Mike
December 27th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

Hello-

After hours of getting the run around from ATT, I finally got someone who could give me the answers I was looking for except this one….

I have DSL bundle with my home phone from ATT. ATT has a VOIP service call Callvantage. It is 20 month for current customers. The problem seems to be that the bundle needs to be broken up.

Is this correct?

I was told by ATT that in order for me to move to Callvantage with the same phone number, they would change my DSL under my number to another (dry loop wasn’t mentioned) number and change the callvantage to my now home number.

Does this sound right?

I have DSL Elite for 35 @month and the Callvantage (Local and long distance) would be 20@month (for being a ATT customer). So that’s 55@month total + no set-up fee + tax for all this would be a steaming deal right?

10.

Nick
December 27th, 2007 at 4:52 pm

Mike, that sounds about right from what I’ve heard about AT&T’s Callvantage service. And that does sound like a pretty good deal for that DSL speed and VoIP package!

11.

Mad LK
January 4th, 2008 at 1:52 am

If you want to be an early adopter of this, be ready for some pains b/c AT&T is making it miserable for me to transfer. But we need enough early adopters to tell AT&T to screw off and unbundle their services…

I live in San Francisco and had AT&T High Speed, placed the order on 12/24/07 for $23.99 dry loop service. What a joke. They screwed up my order and so didn’t place it (after telling me it’d take two business days to get done). The originally scheduled downtime happened (on 12/31) but the uptime sure hasn’t yet. It was planned for 1/2 but on 1/3 I checked and found out that the “order hadn’t been placed”. WTF?

Currently no department wants to take responsibility to get this done, even though someone there screwed up the order.

They first told me it’d take 2 business days, now they’re saying 5 biz days from the date of the “fixed” order and that “Dry Loop cases don’t have escalations because they are not a priority.” (I’m appalled that they can say this with a regretful tone - it’s condescending)

Customer service reps are sweet but ineffective - if AT&T wants to keep its techier clients they need to get with the times. This is 2008 and Silicon Valley - play nice before the Google gets in on your turf.

12.

DJJOEY
January 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 pm

I ordered dry loop on 01/16, the rep stated it would shut off on 01/18. Since I picked a three day weekend it would be down for 6 days. Fortunately, ATT went out on 01/22 and setup dry loop a day early. They had dsl up and running that same day.

13.

John
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:28 pm

Jerks at AT&T (like Verizon) will not let you pay for dry loop online. You can CALL and pay. You can send a check, but can’t pay online. You can pay for ATT PHONE online. You can pay for ATT Yahoo INTERNET online. You can pay for ATT Cell online. Just not dry loop dsl. Think ATT / Verizon are trying to prove a point?

14.

Cutter
April 25th, 2008 at 7:51 am

Thought I would mention that I checked (through the link posted in your rant) if Verizon had Dry Loop available for my apartment. My apartment was listed but they were sorry that the service was not yet available in my area. I actually have Dry Loop DSL service. Are they trying to discourage new accounts? Ummmmm.

15.

Dallas Tx
May 27th, 2008 at 1:34 pm

I am looking into switching from my current AT&T express DSL to dry loop. I called the number on my bill for internet services and spoke to an AT&T rep. I was told that dry loop *is* offered in my area, and that it would be $5 more than my existing charge of $25 for 1.5MB/384KB service. I haven’t pulled the trigger on anything yet, but other than the extra five buck, it all seems easy enough to do. The rep even gave me info on how to port my existing land line phone number to my intended VoIP provider. Other than a possible lack of billing options am I missing something?

16.

Ken
July 27th, 2008 at 1:08 am

Here is my dry loop saga. I dropped my home phone service because I never used it. Thinking that since the phone and DSL were billed seperate they should be seperate. I was wrong. I received an Email sayiny they were sorry to hear I cancelled my high speed internet. I called the number listed and spoke to several people in India who were useless. I could not find out anything and since my phone was not in service and my DSL was I thought I was OK. When my internet went down I called back. Since I no longer had a home phone number I could not get to a real person until I started screaming into the phone. Evidently the automated system recognizes profanity and immediatly transfered my call to, you guessed it, India. I finally learned about dry loop service and signed up. The lady I finally talked to was great. She gave me a dummy number to use when I call in and got eveything hookeed up. I was out of service for only a few days and my service was up two days earlier than they said it would be. Their customer service SUCKS and I hope whoever made the decision to ship it to India gets hemmeroids, but if you call enough you can get someone who speaks english.

17.

Pilgrim
July 31st, 2008 at 12:39 pm

I had no trouble ordering dry loop without a regular phone line from Verizon in fall of 2007, so as far as “I have no phone service right now. Can I start on a dry loop?”, maybe. It took some fooling around to get a line that delivered any kind of speed, but luckily I had a great Verizon tech and he took care of it all. Pretty much my only good experience with Verizon et al in the last 20 years.

18.

Scott Sanders
August 16th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

AT&T Missouri will give you dry loop DSL, but only at 1.5/384 speeds. When I had DSL on my land line, I had 6/512 service. When I switched to Dry Loop, they would only give me 1.5/384. They said if I bundled with a voice line, I could get faster, but if not, that is the fastest I could get. There is no technical reason for this at all. AT&T just wants to screw with you and force you to purchase something you don’t need or want. They know most dry loopers are going to VOIP, and also know 1.5/384 is pretty weak for VOIP. This is a total scam by AT&T and they should be investigated.

19.

Thomas Snyder
August 17th, 2008 at 9:28 am

I recently purchased Dry-Loop DSL from Verizon on 8/10/08 and everything went good over the phone exept lack of communication on verizons part. Usual with the land-line verison you can call up the next day you receive your package in the mail and get your service turned on, but this time when I asked to have this done they said I would have to wait a week and a half for my service to get turned on. This irritated me because they werent telling my why, finally i got an attitude with the lady and she told me that a service technician had to come out and rewire the verizon box outside my house, we i thought was idiodic because they couldnt send one of there surplus amount of technician to my house the next day to rewire a box that would take ten minutes to do, and if i could get the box open with going to court i would have done it myself. The point is verizon needs to tell their customers what is going on. And I am curious to see how well the speed is especially with the new westell 7500 i received, if is slower then normal dsl im going to be p*ssed. Thanks for listening.

20.

Mark Jones
August 18th, 2008 at 4:07 pm

Dry Loop in a perfect world is a great deal. In a not so perfect world it’s easy to loose because it looks like a dead wire to the phone guy. So once you turn off your dialtone DSL and go with the Dry Loop DSL it looks like a spare or dead wire to the next tech.

Right now we have more Dial Tone DSL loops in our network so we can get the right line most of the time. Just think when the whole network goes to all looking like a dead - spare wire. That Dialtone that used to protect your phone line from getting noisy and identified your line is no longer there…

Of course we haven’t thought it out that far yet. Untill we do we will be serving it up the way you want it and save you a few bucks from time to time….the aggravation of being with out for a while well it’s just like a noisy cell phone connection we just get used to it and expect to have to call them back a few extra times. GRIN! I have 4 cell phones, 2 wireless G3 laptops and a land line DSL with dialtone. They told me it would save me money.. HA! Dry Loop DSL not for this at&t teck. It’s too easy to say ” Well there was nothing on it and I thought it was a spare line it tested spare”

DSL is a great service Dry or with Dialtone. I install them both daily.

Mark Jones

21.

maggiechristie@yahoo.com
August 26th, 2008 at 7:59 pm

Can you suggest a provider to go with? I currently pay $88.00 a month for land line unlimited long distance and am SICK of it. I need to get a dry loop line but Verizon isnt very helpful and they want me to jump through hoops just to get the dry loop service. HELP!!
Will I have to go without DSL to get the dry loop?
What about the best VOIP provider?

Thanks,

Maggie

22.

JOchoa
September 7th, 2008 at 11:20 am

Hi maggiechristie@yahoo.com,

Let me see if i can help you out. Chances are good that you will have to go without dsl until your dry loop is set up. Usually, it takes about a week though i have heard of it taking much longer so plan ahead. As far as VOIP providers go, i currently have vonage and after a bit of hassle with getting it setup correctly(3 separate vonage tech visits and 1 att tech) it works just fine. Listen, expect a certain amount of inconvenience with this process as it is new and will probably never be embraced totally by big phone companies. See, they make their money off of phone service, its their bread and butter. So they wont go quietly or make it easy breezy for you.

note* when dry loop is to be setup, a seperate phone line should be ran. Make sure you know what you’re suppose to be getting and ask as many questions as possible. Don’t hesitate. Good Luck

23.

Tim
September 8th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

Tell Verizon you want naked dsl, otherwise known as dry loop. Be fervent and don’t get talked out of it, they must listen to you, the consumer. Usually, they will give more credence if you have a land line currently. I pay $31.99 a month for dry loop. I was paying about $10/month more for the lowest dsl package after my promotional pricing ($15/month) ended.

24.

EACat
September 26th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

So basically with a dry loop,do you just connect the computer to the phone or is anything else involved?
Thanks.

Ed

25.

Gail
October 28th, 2008 at 12:22 am

I have a dry loop dsl with Verizon and am now having a problem using my phone jacks with Vonage…..only one phone rings in the whole house out of 5 jacks.
Any solution to this outside of buying all new phones??

26.

Mark
November 30th, 2008 at 2:04 am

I currently have Both Verizon landline and DSL, I have a feeling that by going for “Dry Loop” they are going to rape me on the DSL, so I am thinking of dropping EVERYTHING from my landline but keeping it active. I’m from New Jersey any idea what stripped to the bone basic phone would cost me a month? just for the unavoidable fees? I am thinking of going with ooma anyone have that VIOP service, how is it?

27.

SusieQ
December 9th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

We have Verizon land line and DSL. We have just found out about the Dry Loop here is my questions. I would have to pay a fee for Dry Loop and for DSL? (right) Could I then use Dock and Talk with my cel phones because we both have cel phons trying to cut some of the expences because between all of them we are putting down a chunk of change per month. We don’t use Land line for anything except faxes. Is there a way to fax over the internet so we can dump our land line conection all together? Thanks for any answers yoy all can give us!!

28.

Eileen
December 13th, 2008 at 12:06 am

I just got rid of my Verizon landline. They were charging me an additional $39.99/mo for DSL — 768 kbs. Current promo deal in Mass is $39.99/mo for DSL 3 MB. The Verizon rep switched me over to that. So I save the cost of the landline and get a higher DSL speed for the price I was already paying.

BUT I am in the boat SusieQ spoke of — I can’t figure out how to send a fax from my computer without a landline. I thought about plugging in a duplex wall jack adapter and putting a splitter on the printer’s phone line, and plugging the bare modem into the other jack. But I bet I no longer have a dial tone so that won’t work. Haven’t tried it yet.

I would rather drive to the office to fax something than pay $42 every month for a local line I never use.

29.

Stan
January 2nd, 2009 at 3:23 pm

I’ve had ATT DSL on my land line for 4-5 years now with little or no problems. I just recently found out about dry loop from an in-law who works for ATT. I pay $28 a month for phone and $30 for DSL. When I called ATT to ask about dry loop, I was told my DSL would increase to $40/month, a net savings of $18/month. However, the tech then told me it would be a charge of $75 for a service call and $40 more to rewire the house jack, which by the way, would be the ONLY jack I could use for the computer hook up. Apparently the “rewire” can be done by the homeowner to save some $$, but I have no idea what’s involved. Does anyone have any idea what needs to be done to the existing jack for it to convert to dry loop or is this another extortion attempt by the phone company?

30.

Karl Ellison
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:13 am

Eileen wrote : I can’t figure out how to send a fax from my computer without a land line.

I had the same concern … but then the light almost blinded me. You don’t need a modem connected to a phone line anymore - GOOGLE “free fax” and you will find many free faxing services. You select a free service, and on their web page your attach the fax document, fill in the fax#, and the website faxes your document instantly. It even emails you with the final status (success/fail). I’ve used FAXZero with no issues. I’ve since retired my modem and stopped worrying about this issue!