My 12 month trial period is up with the phone company. Since cable is outrageously expensive in my market, I thought I'd shop around for another provider. It seems that whether you have AT&T, Quest, or Bell South, after the 12 month trial period is over so are your options. I've tried AOL and Earthlink for example, and each time the phone line information is entered, the response is "you already have xyz's service". Therefore it is not possible to sign up for a new account. Does the phone company have a monopoly on the DSL market because it's their phone lines? Or am I missing something.

ADSL is requested by your ISP provider and is then tagged to them, for you to transfer to another provider you have to cancel your account with your current ISP provider, they then tell BT to cancell the ADSL, untill this is done you cant change ISP provider.

The prob with cancelling is that they usually require a 30 day notice, after this date it can take a week for them to cancell the ADSL tag with BT, signing with another provider then can take another 10 days or more for them to get your ADSL activated again.

The only other way is if your current provider and the new one you want to join to support the MAC system, you request a MAC number on canceling your account with your current provider and give this MAC number to your new provider when you sign up with them, they then have the ADSL line transfered to them, this is called Migrating, this way you have vertually no down time, i did this just a few weeks ago, and was only off net for about one hour whilst it was transfered over.

colin.

Wow, thanks for the post. What a hassle! I will give your idea a try to see what happens. Like you, I can't afford to go longer than one month without the highspeed connection.