I have DishNetwork and was told I had to have the receivers connected to a phone line to avoid a $5/month/receiver charge but was not told that I had to have them connected to a land line.  I run VOIP and it will not connect thru the receivers so I still get charged the $10/month.

The reason Dish requires a connection to a phone line is so they can monitor your viewing habits and sell that information to advertisers.

DISH does not have a contract with Major League Baseball….What a joke. How can a satellite company NOT provide just a fundamental service?>

When my 18 month contract rins out I will switch to Direct TV or back to Comcast.

seems you all have dish network. i am a technical service rep for dish(answer phones). as far as the phone line thing goes. each company charges per tv. for some stupid reason dish calls it a phone line fee. actually it is saving you money by plugging it in. also there are codes you can plug into the rcvr to use it with a voip connection. if you have vongage on your remote hit the menu, then 6-1-4 then in the prefix box type in *99. it’ll work. any hd reciever you can use a broadband connection instead of a phone line.

Since Comcast took iver cable franchises in many old Time Warner areas, prices have gone up and the number of channels on various packages has declined.  All this in short pertods of time.

i have direct tv and i am very happy with my services. i get more channels plus all my church channels, gospels channels and a whole lot more plus better picture quality then cablevision.
direct tv has far more better customer services then cablevision. i dumped cablevision as they were a nightmare deceptive fraudulent billing.
i will stay with direct tv.