Verizon will not let you cancel their landline phone service unless you are also ready to lose DSL broadband as well.

It is one more way Verizon is trying to stem landline losses in areas where they offer less than stellar DSL service on lines the company has long since stopped upgrading.

“Verizon hasn’t offered standalone High Speed Internet (DSL) service for more than three years,” Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell told USA Today in an e-mail. “So, if a customer with HSI and voice service wants to disconnect his voice service, we will disconnect the voice service and the HSI service.”

Verizon claims this practice benefits customers by helping the company “competitively price service.”

Dropping landline service while keeping broadband has allowed some phone customers to save $20 a month or more by turning off their landline and moving to cheaper broadband-delivered telephone service. But not if their phone company happens to be Verizon.

For now, the best option customers have is to downgrade their landline service to the cheapest “message unit” plan available, which charges 7-9c for each outgoing call and has no calling features. But you will have to call Verizon to do it — Verizon hides the fact it even offers economy landline service on its website.

In contrast, AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink, Windstream, and FairPoint all allow customers to choose broadband-only service.