Verizon, impeding progress every day

There's a looooooooooong background story behind this and I won't go into it all now or this would be the longest post in the history of blogging. Here's the short version (believe it or not)...

I use dialup internet access and live in a rural area where the outside phone lines (on poles, not buried underground) are at least as old as my house (37). Consequently they've aged and weathered.

I once had a Verizon supervisor explain that the heat of summers and cold of winters takes a toll and eventually the insulation cracks and lets moisture in which affects the performance, causing hums and such. (He didn't actually say it this way, but to me it essentially amounted to... "Our equipment is bad and we know it's bad, but we just can't be bothered to fix it.") The hum hinders, or even prevents, dialup connections. Even mere nighttime moisture can cause an unusable line. It doesn't matter what "pair" Verizon provides—they're all equally bad because they all run through the same physical cable outside.

I'm convinced (based on what the supervisor told me) that they should just replace all the roadside lines around here, particularly on my street, but that isn't going to happen because there's no money in it for them. All they would get out of it would be the satisfaction of knowing that they're providing the reliable phone service that they're actually supposed to provide to the good folks on my street (everyone has the same complaints and often lose service at one time or another), but apparently that doesn't matter.

Of course, I've had numerous Verizon phone reps try to sell me their wonderful DSL service (which would indeed be wonderful) except it's not actually available where I live. When I inform them of that fact they invariably put me on hold so they can check for themselves (not believing that I could possibly know what I'm talking about) and then they come back on the line and say, "You're right." (Cable service was not available on my street either up until a year or two ago, but the cost of that is prohibitive, especially when factoring in my normal internet needs.)

Anyway, I've noticed that when the line is particularly bad (if it's raining or, say, night) if I call someone and just talk for 15-20 minutes then the loud hum at the start of the conversation eventually disappears, but I can't just call people and talk because I want to use the internet in the next half hour.

So I actually started trying to use this fact to my benefit and use Verizon to fight Verizon by calling their repair request number just to connect to the automated system and "warm up" the line that way. Trouble with that is that after only a couple minutes of insulting the robot voice, "she" says she'll connect me with a representative. Well, I don't want that, so I hang up. I had to repeat this procedure 5-7 times at least before the line would be clear enough to allow even a measly 21.6K connection.

By the way, I've learned there's no point in reporting the problem because all you end up getting is the same crappy service and the aggravation of having to wait around forever for a technician to show up. If they do manage to somehow find a "pair" that's a little bit better, it doesn't last but a month or two and then you're back to where you were.

So I had to figure a better way of warming up the line myself and I recently had a revelation as to how to do this... Why not call a number that's busy and then just leave the line "connected" that way for 20-30 minutes? But who can I call such that I know the line will be busy?... Myself! This actually works.

Isn't it amazing what one has to put up with just because Verizon can't be bothered to provide real service? And they have the nerve to use the slogan "Make progress every day"... Hah!

So if anyone else out there is in a similarly paddleless dialup boat, you might want to try the same procedure and see if it works for you. Yes, it ties up the phone line for a while, but if you're gonna dial the internet, that'll tie it up too, so what's another half hour or so?