We decided to give Mediacom’s phone service a tryout.

I was happy with Bellsouth’s phone line and service into the house, but AT&T has made some changes that got us looking. We have had AT&T listed as our long distance provider and have actually been using a calling card from them to make the long distance calls. Here are the changes: One, we now have the privilege of paying them $5 plus fees for them to be listed as our long distance provider even if we do not make a long distance call. We made all of long distance calls on an AT&T calling card. Two, on their calling card plan; they have raised the rates for in-state calls. I can call friends in TX or AR cheaper than I can call my parents who live 4 hours away in the same state. I think the difference is $.04 or $.05 a minute for out of state calls versus $.12 or $.13 a minute for in-state calls. Most of our calls are in-state.

Today is the day that Mediacom came out to setup the new service. We are looking forward to it because of the included free long distance, caller id, and other features we did not have with Bellsouth. They were here on the day they said they would be here, but they had a few surprises for us. One, the phone has to be attached into the cable modem. We thought they would put a box on the back of the house like the phone company. Now all of our phone jacks are useless. Two, the Mediacom phone service is not working. Their connection to Sprint is currently down. So, we cannot even try our new phone service out.

We are still hoping for the best.