in search of cheap broadband; phone, TV optional

[Seth Gordon]

After my wife and I got a cellphone plan with enough minutes to handle 
all the calls we make (which is not many), we figured we could drop our 
local phone service entirely.  Except, umm, we want to keep that 
Internet thing.

So I called Verizon and said: "Hi, I'd like to cancel local phone 
service but keep DSL.  Is that possible?"

And the CSR said: "Sure!  We call that 'dry loop DSL' and it costs 
$40/month."

...which is what we're paying now for DSL *and* local phone service. 
(If we cancelled our voice mail, we'd basically be paying $20/month for 
DSL, $10/month for the pay-by-the-minute local calling plan, and 
$10/month in taxes.)

I checked out RCN and Comcast, but as far as I can tell, even their 
cheapest plans involve Internet access bundled with either landline 
phone service (plus doodads that we would never use) or cable TV (which 
we don't want badly enough to pay for).

Are there any other options, or is $40/month really the lowest that we 
can go?