Rhonda

My mom wants to find a service to get cheaper rates and bundle all of it in one service. We have had Dish for several years. I just wondered if anyone had any experience with this. Dish is now offering phone service and DSL service. It sounds good but I need to check it out before making the change. It is mom's and my service. We share it.
Thanks!

Glassquilt

Regular old-fashioned phone service has it's own electricity and will work in a power outage. Is there any health reason that requires always having a phone? Of course if you have a cell phone you're covered.

Zhillslady

Not sure whats available in your area. My sister works for verizon and when I changed service she reminded me that regular old fashion phone service does have it's own power source during outage but only for a limited time. Do you have cell if 911 is needed? If not remember that all digital phones are out if power or interent is out. Brighthouse has a promo now get internet and they offer digital phone service free for a year. I have verizon fios basic tv internet and phone for $101 month. I have to carry a home phone for our alarm system. Maybe check verizon and brighthouse in your area.

DeneK

And you might want to verify that you are really getting "DSL" and not using the satellite connection. I have had DirecTV for years. My internet is thru Hughes (which used to be DirecWay). One of the internet options thru Dish is called Blue Sky (and is really the old DirecWay company). That may mean their service is satellite and not DSL. While satellite connection is called "broad band", it really doesn't compare with actual DSL speeds. With my connection, I cannot use VOIP - sometimes cannot even DL a you-tube video without jerky stops.

The TV part is fine. We have the ocassional outages due to weather, but they seldom last for more than a few minutes when the rain is extremely heavy.

For internet, I wish I had another option. Live in the boonies -- nothing else available for now.

Buckeye Rose

We have Dish and also bundled land line phone service and DSL for internet....we get a small discount for having all three together and have just one bill to pay.....works great for us!

dogpursemaker

I guess maybe it's not the same everywhere, but when we lose power, we also lose cell service. We can get roaming service, sometimes, but it requires standing in the exact right spot, standing on top of something, and facing the right way-like in the oldie days. Not always a lot of fun in a wind storm when the branches are flying. It's not something we can rely on in an emergency, so we have our landline.
We too have satellite TV, but when a storm front comes in, we can lose it for a couple of hours-this is one of the reasons we never switched to satellite internet. Our neighbor had it and said it was worse than dial-up, however I suppose that depends on your weather and location. We get lots of rain and wind.