I have a question about phone and internet providers in NH

[Raineyrocks]

A few months ago Fairpoint bought Verizon in New Hampshire and I'm having a lot of "issues" with their billing problems so are there any other good phone companies, not a phone through the internet, just a regular phone company, and dsl providers anyone could recommend?

[djbridgeland]

Boy I don't know, The Telecommunications act of 1996 was suppose to to open up your Local Exchange Carrier up to competition.  However companies do not have to offer service, and all that I have seen around here is Fairpoint.  Why what do you have against VOIP (internet phone)?   

[neggy]

so we are ruling out VOIP (Vonage, MagicJack, etc) or your cable providers phone service (still VOIP), you want POTS (plain old telephone service) over copper lines,like the system NYNEX just sold to FairPoint.

Here is my take, and I do some work in radio/telecom so I have some insight.

Even with the deregulation that forces FairPoint to lease lines to competitors at less than their cost of operating the line, any reseller of POTS is still going to be giving you FairPoint's network, just without any support from FairPoint if anything goes wrong. Not that FairPoint is doing anything right these days, but as
a customer of a reseller, if you have a problem yo can't call FairPoint if there is a problem, and I can tell you this with 100% certainty .. when FairPoint has problems, they are going to take care of their customers before they fix any problem with a leased line from a reseller. The only way the leased line gets fixed is that every FairPoint work order is closed and they have no customers of their own to repair.

I had a customer with a leased line on Verizons POTS copper. There was water in the line somewhere casing static, then finally loss of service. My customer was a autobody shop who was dead in the water without phone service. After a month of trying to work through the reseller and Verizon to get our "pair" switched and the drop replaced, someone at Verizontold me the only way I was going to get the line repaired was to switch back to Verizon, because  ALL of Verizon's customers had to  fixed before any leased line got touched. I switched my guy back Verizon and had a tech there in 4 hours.

[Jan]

Rainey: We've had major problems with Fairpoint bills, too, and although I initially had to spend hours on hold waiting for a CSR, I've since had excellent support and resolution to our problems.  They are admittedly having problems - I think more on the billing/CSR end - but they're trying to resolve them.  I'm actually going to switch our home phone to Time Warner, but our business (11 lines & hundreds of dollars in charges each month) is staying with Fairpoint because Vonage, etc. suck.

[Raineyrocks]

Boy I don't know, The Telecommunications act of 1996 was suppose to to open up your Local Exchange Carrier up to competition.  However companies do not have to offer service, and all that I have seen around here is Fairpoint.  Why what do you have against VOIP (internet phone)?   

I don't want a telephone service that depends on the internet "connection".   When Fairpoint shut our internet off for 3 weeks, I would've been without a telephone.   I like "old school" technology. 

[Raineyrocks]

so we are ruling out VOIP (Vonage, MagicJack, etc) or your cable providers phone service (still VOIP), you want POTS (plain old telephone service) over copper lines,like the system NYNEX just sold to FairPoint.

Here is my take, and I do some work in radio/telecom so I have some insight.

Even with the deregulation that forces FairPoint to lease lines to competitors at less than their cost of operating the line, any reseller of POTS is still going to be giving you FairPoint's network, just without any support from FairPoint if anything goes wrong. Not that FairPoint is doing anything right these days, but as
a customer of a reseller, if you have a problem yo can't call FairPoint if there is a problem, and I can tell you this with 100% certainty .. when FairPoint has problems, they are going to take care of their customers before they fix any problem with a leased line from a reseller. The only way the leased line gets fixed is that every FairPoint work order is closed and they have no customers of their own to repair.

I had a customer with a leased line on Verizons POTS copper. There was water in the line somewhere casing static, then finally loss of service. My customer was a autobody shop who was dead in the water without phone service. After a month of trying to work through the reseller and Verizon to get our "pair" switched and the drop replaced, someone at Verizontold me the only way I was going to get the line repaired was to switch back to Verizon, because  ALL of Verizon's customers had to  fixed before any leased line got touched. I switched my guy back Verizon and had a tech there in 4 hours.

I like that term POTS! 

[Raineyrocks]

Rainey: We've had major problems with Fairpoint bills, too, and although I initially had to spend hours on hold waiting for a CSR, I've since had excellent support and resolution to our problems.  They are admittedly having problems - I think more on the billing/CSR end - but they're trying to resolve them.  I'm actually going to switch our home phone to Time Warner, but our business (11 lines & hundreds of dollars in charges each month) is staying with Fairpoint because Vonage, etc. suck.

Hi Jan! 

I did call Fairpoint and it's all straightened out now so I hope it stays that way.  Yup, the switch over has been a pain but they are the most reasonable bundled package I can find after looking last week.  Time Warner told me it would be weeks before they could come out and verify our address, then additional time to get things hooked up, and they were more expensive than Fairpoint.  Thanks!