Bellsouth is no longer requiring their DSL customers to pay for that annoying, expensive, and useless land-line telephone. It has only taken them roughly six years to figure out that their clients hated paying for that joker.

I remember back in college, I amazingly forgot to pay a phone/DSL bill. I rarely, if ever, used the telephone, but noticed one day that I could no longer make calls on it. Even though the phone line was not working, the DSL was. This amazed me, of course, because when I had signed up for the service, Bellsouth had insisted that I could not have DSL service without paying for a phone line.

I quickly called up Bellsouth to pay my bill. However, after paying the bill, I asked that the phone line not be reactivated and that service be removed from my account. The customer service rep insisted that I could not have DSL service without the phone line. I argued with her for a few minutes, asking her to call my land line and confirm that it was out of service, while I would send her an email from my computer, to show her that my DSL was working. This of course was over her head, so I let it drop, and continued paying for the phone line.

This was in 2001. Flash forward to today. A coworker that recently moved from New York City called Bellsouth from the office to setup service. I hear him ask if he can get DSL without the phone line. I snicker to myself, already knowing the answer. Then I hear him say, "Great, I'll take the DSL Extreme without the phone line."

I almost fell out of my chair. That night I call Bellsouth to ask how this can be possible. The CSR tells me that as of Auguest 2007, their "system" no longer requires that customers pay for a phone line. She tells me that I will still have a phone line if I plug up the telephone, but I have to promise not to use it.

Considering our phone has been on the counter, unplugged since the day we moved in, I don't think they have to worry about us using it.

So, everyone call Bellsouth and thank them for fixing their "system". You can now save $40 per month by cancelling your phone service.

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