A little know fact (Score 1)

It surprised me that no one mentioned this before -- ever before the merger, both AT&T and BellSouth residential DSL connections blocked access to any SMTP ports other than their own. At least that's the case in Georgia and Ohio. Since I have 3 email accounts from other providers, I could not use their SMTP servers to send mail. Calling BellSouth was hilarious: their answer basically boiled down to "Well, sir, that's easy -- all you have to do is to upgrade to a Business DSL plan!". After escalating this through tech support managers to (useless) customer service reps, and at one point being told angrily that I should just accept it and that that's the way BellSouth protects *me* from spam, I canceled my BellSouth service and went elsewhere.