Three Monkeys, Three Typewriters, Two Days

I obviously can't tell you anything about ISPs in the Boston area. However, about your analog phone + VoIP question, here in .nl several ISPs offer DSL + VoIP with a router/VoIP box that you get on loan. This you just wire up to your internet connection, PCs log in over WiFi or ethernet, and you connect phones to the POTS ports: it does the VoIP <-> analog stuff for you, and it "just works". The box in question is a Siemens SX551, but I presume there should be other hardware that does similar things.

Put your home landline number into the Verizon site and see if FIOS is available. You are right on the edge of the FIOS area. FIOS internet/phone may be available even when FIOS TV isn't. Call them to make sure.

Does RCN service Brookline?

It is hard to beat the basic Comcast offering of $99 for phone, Internet, TV if that is your only choice. Getting Internet and phone from them without TV will probably cost $99 too.

I live up in Salem NH. Just signed up for FIOS and getting it installed in a few minutes. :)

Been on Comcast for years and had no problems with their internet. I was fairly lucky and had only one or two outages the entire time.
VoIP could get a little choppy at times with the cable, but it was never terrible.

I too recommend FIOS if you can get it. They offered me a commercial 15/15 Mbps for $170 with 5 static IPs.

I have a vonage phone and it's pretty slick. You just plug it into your router and then plug your good ol' phone to it with a standard RJ11.
As for "call performance" my router has a QOS setting and you can define priorities by either service, ip or mac. I set the device's mac address as top priority and you could even be using bit torrent without any issues.

Good luck with the moving!

Jon, there is no landline number at this location yet. That's part of what's making getting information from these folks all the more fun: the "service by address" functions on the various websites are seriously broken.

RCN doesn't seem to service Brookline, as far as I can tell.

I have Comacast Internet service in Ashland, but I suspect it is similar in Brookline. The issue with Comacast ISP service is with the uplad bandwidth. On their default service they advertise this as being 384KB. Back about a month ago, when the download speed was capped at 6 mega-bits, I was unable to ever achieve even the 384KB upload and was only able to get 360kilo-bits. Since then, they have increased the download bandwidth to 12 mega-bits, the upload speed is now even more pathetic. I am now unable to get more than 300 kilo-bits upload.

As far as FIOS is concerned, the FIOS residential service prohibits connecting a server to your connection, and in an effort to enforce this they block certain TCP ports inbound to your home. They seem to universally block port 80, and in some locations block port 25. They want you to buy their service that provides static IP addresses to run a server and charge over 3 times as much per month for the cheapest such service.

Get your neighbor's landline number and plug that in.

Bill, the upload bandwidth was worrying me too...

fantasai, getting my future neighbors info was more hassle than just calling up the various companies and dealing with the customer service folks to do lookups by address.

For what it's worth, we're going with Speakeasy's DLS and VoIP package. It's a bit more expensive than the other options, but the people we talked to were _way_ more competent, I like having the static IP, and I've heard better things about their reliability and general attitude.

I've had Speakeasy in the past, and I was very satisfied with it; as you say, their techs are immensely competent. They're a cool company and worth supporting.

That said, when I moved to an apartment, I didn't want to spend the time dealing with dry loops and Covad and whatnot, so I just went with a business-class Comcast account. I'm on it now; 8MB down, 1MB up, bursts to twice that (Speakeasy download tests usually show 16/2), static IP, no problem getting the reverse DNS set. I don't know how the prices compare, though.

As for VoIP, I'll be interested to see how you like the Speakeasy service. I had Comcast's "digital voice" for a while, but the quality was often bad - especially when calling Verizon cell phones - and there were times I had to give up and use my cell phone.

I've tried Vonage, and it's okay, but annoyingly limiting. If I've got an analog phone, I expect it to do very little. But if I'm on VOIP, I expect it to have softphones and visual voicemail and a web interface. Vonage charges extra for the softphone, AND it can't be on the same number as your "regular" Vonage line. AND they can't port it. AND you can't use SIP phones. AND they call you with annoying telemarketing messages - and not on your Vonage line, either.

So, at the moment, I've got Asterisk half set up, two VoIP trunks to compare quality, and, uh, no phone. I don't recommend following my lead.

Jay, here's hoping VoIP works out better for me. ;)

I did check on Comcast's business-class offerings. They started off a bit more expensive than speakeasy (esp. if I wanted to do their digital phone thing). The people I was talking to couldn't get their story straight on the speed details, which didn't instill confidence in me.

Verizon screwed me with fake charges (long distance minimum fees, etc) that they told me were mandatory until I called to cancel my landline, by which time I was infuriated to be told the truth so very late.

RCN is servicing all of Brookline, MA and they do block incoming HTTP(80) and outgoing SMTP (25) ports