No, not that. Get your minds out of the gutter.
Actually, this is one more lunchtime observation from the news, of specific interest to you VoIP users out there. According to USA Today, as a condition of the BellSouth merger, AT&T will soon be offering “DSL-only” service for $19.95/month, guaranteed to be offered for 30 months from when it is first issued. Note that AT&T is only providing 748 kbps DSL, claiming this is “sufficient” for telephone service.
This is quite significant, for one of the hurdles to moving to VoIP is that you must already have the DSL infrastructure in place. Thus, if you are a Satellite TV user, you either have to move to Cable TV (with appropriate fees for the monthly cable), or keep your local phone service in addition to the DSL/VoIP (thus taking away VoIP’s price advantage). Having “Naked” DSL permits one to use VoIP exclusively as your phone service. Of course, you’re still likely to have trouble keeping the same phone number :-).
The FCC hopes this competition will lead more companies to offer “Naked” broadband, including cable competitors. We shall see. I would think if “Naked Broadband” was offered by cable, folks with Satellite TV might move to it from DSL, as I hear it is faster.
