Verizon DSL problems

My grandmother needs some help with her DSL.

She had two phone lines and she used the second one for dialup. Then she decided to get DSL on the first/main phone line. She got rid of the second phone line.

A couple times a year (or possibly more) she has problems with her main phone line. It gets static in it and various noises in it nad sometimes goes out completely (no dial tone). When these problems happen the DSL becomes slower than dialup, it's like 14k as opposed to 324k and she keeps getting kicked offline. Whatever the problem is, the phone company (Verizon) won't fix the problem permanently. They have to keep going out there and it often takes them a week or more before they get out there.

My grandmother is fuming and wants to know what she can do about her DSL. She thought about getting the second phone line back so that when she has problems with DSL she can use dialup - she uses AOL so she can use either DSL or dialup with it. It seems kinda silly to me to get the second phone line when she has DSL. I suggested that maybe she should get the second phone line and get DSL on that instead of the main phone line. She usually doesn't have problems with the second line and if she did, she could probably still use dialup with it.

Any thoughts on that? I really don't know how DSL works which is why I'm asking for suggestions.

I was also wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to get Verizon to permanently fix this phone problem? It doesn't seem like my grandmother should keep having these phone problems. It's been going on for years. I think it happens almost everytime it rains. What should my grandmother do to get Verizon to fix it?

Reply to
Mike S.
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Well, she can try calling the Public Utilities Commission (or whatever the equivalent is in your area) and explain that whenever it rains her voice line (*) gets noisy, and Verizon can't/won't fix it permanently. IME, a call from the PUC will have any big company falling all over itself to fix the problem yesterday.

If that doesn't work, I'd get the second phoneline back and move the DSL over to it. Clearly there's a bad connection somewhere, but it's going to be hard for an individual consumer to prod VZ into finding and fixing it, so that workaround might be your only solution.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

snipped-for-privacy@compusmiths.com (William P.N. Smith) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

If getting a second line works well with the DSL, then remove the first line; there's no need for two.

BTW, dialup works just fine on a DSL-provisioned line.

Reply to
Bert Hyman

I had a similar problem. When the technician came out I told him that I was no longer using the second line and maybe he could move my line to where the second line used to be, it worked for me.

Reply to
Someone

Oh, that's a neat fix, have them move your POTS line with it's DSL intact over to the other copper pair. Shouldn't cost you anything, and should be a much easier fix for the tech than checking every splice between you and the CO.

Reply to
William P.N. Smith

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