BOSTON--EarthLink is expanding its line-power VoIP offering to nine new cities, adding Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego and Washington. EarthLink Home Phone Service, which comes bundled with ADSL2+, will pass 12 million homes once the buildout is complete.

Covad Communications is doing the network buildout for EarthLink, using the $50 million investment EarthLink made earlier this year.

“Twelve million homes is a lot--it’s smaller than some cable MSOs, but larger than others,” said Steve Howe, vice president of voice at EarthLink.

The service is available for $49.95 for 1.5 Mb/s DSL and 500 minutes of voice, $64.95 for 1.5 Mb/s DSL and unlimited calling and $69.95 for 8 Mb/s DSL and unlimited calling.

“What makes this attractive to consumers is that they pick up their regular home phone and it works,” Howe said. There is no ATA to deploy, and the service is available throughout the house over the regular phones. “This has all the advantages of VoIP without the inconveniences.”

EarthLink continues to sell its TrueVoice “traditional” ATA-based VoIP service in BestBuy, Circuit City and OfficeMax stores nationally, and will sell TrueVoice bundled with DSL service in Verizon territory, over naked DSL lines, and in the Time Warner cable franchise territory, where it has a resale agreement.

Covad is building out the EarthLink network CO by CO and turning up the network as it goes, Howe said.