Even if the provider is stupid AF you can usually get around the residential restriction by starting the discussion with the business side of the company; once the salesman has a nibble he's not gonna cut you free if he can help it.

And then get a 2 year term on whatever seems a "good deal" at the time (I had cable speeds and 5 IPs) and once that is up call them and "drop down" to whatever you actually need (cable speeds and 1 IP) - you'll find that at that point there will be various "packages" that were never advertised but the system is quite capable of supporting.

If all else fails, find a company that works with the provider and offers service over their "last mile".

You'll pay for all the above, but not as much as you might think, and business support is actually good in many, many cases. Fabled evil Comcast rolled a truck twice until they tracked down a problem, at no charge.

I still get emails from Comcrap because once I had a business internet plan with them in a residential area -- an apartment no less.

When it comes to internet service, "giving a crap about the customer" is a premium add-on from Comcast, but once you commit to opening your wallet for that, they do deliver.

IMO, if the ISP doesn't want to sell Internet access, they shouldn't be allowed to call it anything that could be mistaken by a consumer for Internet access.

Trying to upcharge customers for what they were initially supposed to deliver should be considered fraud.

> The opt-out is buy business-class service.

Yes, punish the undesirable behavior with more money. That will teach them a valuable lesson.

Most of the time you can get around this by providing your own 'dumb' modem with no VOIP features on it. Quite often the control feature is on the firmware the ISP uploads to the modem.