I have no use for the phone service bundled with my (fully fiber) internet service, but seemingly have no way to unbundle it. This month I was charged almost $15 in fees/taxes, almost all of which have the word "voice" on them. Presumably these would go away if I did not have a phone service bundled with my internet service.
@Dane said "federal regulations require delivery of voice telephone service when using a copper loop. And we'd like to keep all of the product configurations identical, and as simple as possible." Obviously there is no "copper" for those of us that have fiber services. Is the idea that in some places Sonic does offer copper based services over which phone is inherently delivered, and that it consolidates corporate billing/infrastructure to automatically include that service with fiber as well?
I can see how that might streamline the business, however the impact to customers is a lot more cost for something probably the vast majority of us don't use. $40 for internet, plus $10 for voice, plus $10+ for voice fees means that our bills would shrink by over a third if we didn't have bundled voice. That's quite meaningful to us, and I'm sure we'd all rather see an increase of $5 a month more for internet services if necessary than pay an extra $20+ for it with an unused bundled phone service. Surely a slightly higher rate for unbundled services seems fair, and a standard business practice as well.
I'd love to see the percentage of people with fiber service who actually use the bundled phone service. In any case, it would be better for many/most of us if we didn't have it bundled.
@Dane said "federal regulations require delivery of voice telephone service when using a copper loop. And we'd like to keep all of the product configurations identical, and as simple as possible." Obviously there is no "copper" for those of us that have fiber services. Is the idea that in some places Sonic does offer copper based services over which phone is inherently delivered, and that it consolidates corporate billing/infrastructure to automatically include that service with fiber as well?
I can see how that might streamline the business, however the impact to customers is a lot more cost for something probably the vast majority of us don't use. $40 for internet, plus $10 for voice, plus $10+ for voice fees means that our bills would shrink by over a third if we didn't have bundled voice. That's quite meaningful to us, and I'm sure we'd all rather see an increase of $5 a month more for internet services if necessary than pay an extra $20+ for it with an unused bundled phone service. Surely a slightly higher rate for unbundled services seems fair, and a standard business practice as well.
I'd love to see the percentage of people with fiber service who actually use the bundled phone service. In any case, it would be better for many/most of us if we didn't have it bundled.