They deal with the telco, not you. I bought residential dialtone from Corecomm when they entered the Cleveland Market. They resold SBC, but I didn't have to endure SBC's horrid excuse for customer servic and, as CoreComm CSRs pointed out several times, they were SBC's largest wholesale customer and had far more clout with SBC than any individual or single business could, and they actually were able to get things done.
Steve Sobol, Professional Geek ** Java/VB/VC/PHP/Perl ** Linux/*BSD/Windows Victorville, California PGP:0xE3AE35ED
It's all fun and games until someone starts a bonfire in the living room.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And that is precisely why I switched to Prairie Stream originally and later to Sage. Because _they_ get to spend hours and hours dealing with SBC/AT&T, instead of me. Instead of _me_ having to put up with nonsense from telco 'service' representatives explaining over and over what I wanted, typically one phone call to Prairie Stream got the job done right. PAT]