“The account from an alleged FairPoint Communications insider may explain why telecommunications regulators in northern New England were surprised when FairPoint customers complained so vigorously after the firm took over phone lines from Verizon early this year.”

There’s some other interesting filler in this post, but it concludes with this:

After studying the pile of complaints from FairPoint customers, earlier this month the Vermont Public Service Board asked FairPoint to “show cause” why its license to do business in the state shouldn’t be revoked.

The only question that has to be raised is, ifwhen FairPoint is evicted from this state, who will take over?

I started at Google, searching for “AT&T long distance.” The first result can be seen here.

I clicked the first link, which took me to an AT&T site, which can be seen here.

Note the phone number in the bottom left. 800.000.0000. Well, I suppose if anyone could get such a cool number, it would be AT&T. I called it. Guess what? That number doesn’t really work. Big surprise.

So I clicked the link next to it. After a few seconds, I got this:

Okay, then I decided to try the phone number in the upper right. I dialed 888.944.0447. I selected the option to talk to someone about long distance service. After a few seconds, a voice came on the line and said “We’re sorry, but no one is available to take your call now. Goodbye,” and I was disconnected.

Update: I called Sprint to get a competitive quote. Using the phone number I got from their website, I receive the standard “we’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.” I did that. Three times. Sprint, apparently, also does not want our business.

Update: A friend pointed out that the page I hit was most likely “dead” and I’d get better results by starting at ATT.com and working my way down from there. I did this, and did indeed find some non-dead web pages and additional telephone numbers to call, which did appear to work. However, when I called, I was redirected to someone whose mailbox was full!