Unfortunately I learned at the October 16 Internet meeting that things are not that good. It turns out that the Central Offices have been tied together with fiber optics (digital) for several years now, and what is probably happening is they are running out of telephone circuits in your neighborhood and are having to go to something called "PairGain" to stack multiple voice lines on a single pair of wires. Unfortunately the circuitry used for PairGain does a Digital to Analog conversion on one end, and an Analog to Digital on the other end, and that is enough to cause V90 protocol to drop back to 33kb maximum throughput.

It would be nice if one could complain to either the Phone Company or the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and ask to get a pair of wires that did not use PairGain. Unfortunately the phone company has no obligation to do that for you, because all they are required to do is provide a voice grade connection, and they can do that with PairGain. You can check the Oklahoma Corporation Commission's website at http://occ.state.ok.us/ to see exactly what the requirements are. A lady I talked with said that you might try complaining to your ISP, and that sometimes they can explain what you need to the phone company well enough that they may switch you, but be sure not to get too agressive with either one, because the Phone Company is not required to do it, and your ISP can't really do anything about it unless the Phone Company will cooperate.

One other alternative might be to complain to your Oklahoma senators and representative. and urge them to change the law to require the phone company to work with computer users to get non-pair-gained lines, but I suspect they would be more responsive if you can tie it into the economic impact to the state, rather than just how fast you can download stuff from the internet.

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