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I have Charter internet broadband and cable TV, was about $100 month (basic tv, a couple extra boxes and remotes) charter offered a deal for their phone service coupled with the cable tv and broadband internet - end result? About $100 a month for all three. No-brainer. I dumped ATT and Verizon. The deal's good for a year - if they jack the prices then I'll re-calculate and re-decide. Right now there's a big fight to get phone customers between the "new" phone companies and the "old" - lots of good deals out there...
The upside of DSL is that if you have a router in line with it - you become invisible and bulletproof to hackers (little known fact, but true).
The downsides are that once assigned, you have the same IPA (Internet Address) everytime, and if an illicit site gets that address they have GOT YOU. Dial-up rotates through a limited number of IPA's that are assigned as you log on...
I wish the best aspects of the two were combined some day.
If you put a router with any kind of good firewall in between you and your 'net connection, you are increasing your security, regardless of the kind of pipe you have coming in.
That said, I hear internet by carrier pigeon is pretty popular, but this avian flu thing is starting to cause abnormally high packet loss.