I’m signed up with CenturyLink. I am on their data only plan and its no longer required to obtain phone service as a part of a bundle package to get it.
Since I am deaf, that saves me a lot of money on a phone service bill I neither need nor want.
What you have to do with ATT is go over the heads of salesperson and talk to the supervisor. You usually can get what you ask because the phone company is making money off you and they want to keep you as a customer.
You may have a point there. When I first attempted to get a DSL-only account, I had to deal with a condescending salesrep who said it was impossible to separate the DSL circuitry from the POTS circuitry. I informed her that I was an Electronics Engineer and had worked with such circuitry in the past and all the service tech had to do was pull one board out of the hub cabinet and replace it with another one. I had also designed such circuitry in the past and not only knew how simple it was to do, but I was working with the next generation of equipment in that area.
"Well do you work with AT&T equipment?", she asked.
"Not specifically, no, but similar.", I responded.
"Well, then I can assure you that unless you work with our equipment directly, the two can operations can not be separated since they work on the same phone lines."
I told her to just forget it and hung up the phone, exasperated.