Well, I was off on how long I'd have to wait, but other than that I am pleased to report that I displayed remarkable prescience concerning the manner in which my newsgroup access problem was going to be resolved.

At 9:00am: 


telnet news.verizon.net 119

Trying 199.45.49.11...

telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Network is unreachable

At 9:30am: 


telnet news.verizon.net 119

Trying 199.45.49.11...

Connected to news.verizon.net.

Escape character is '^]'.

200 This connection requires username/password authentication. (Tornado v1.0.6)