A couple of years ago were were able to get DSL here at the house. That is when the ONLY ISP (and still the only one) started to offer it. The people that live near me that only have dial up are still only getting 26.4 kbps which is what I got when I had dial up.
The local phone company (our ISP), when they were installing my DSL line, they had a horrendous time getting it installed, it took almost two months to actually get a signal out here. But, they done something one day and I came home and I was getting 48.8kbps and I KNOW that had something to do with them upgrading our line to a digital line. However, when I dial out to the Internet now, its still only 26.4.
The other problem with DSL out here is that I am paying $65 a month (Service + Router Rental). And on DL.TV they were talking about people paying that much for FIBER, that just drives me insane!!!
Back in my days of College (Go Salukis!) I worked at a local ISP in Southern Illinois, for those of you that don't know Southern Illinois is actually a separate state from Illinois.
Dial-up:
Tom I totally agree with what you said that it would take 4 - 5 times to get a stable dial-up connections in Southern Illinois. Most of our users would call and ***** that they would either kept getting disconnected or just could never get faster then 14.4. I think it was the further you got away from "town" the worse your connection was. Two stories come to mind. One smaller town in particular had the weirdest problem. The town was divided by train tracks and on any given day only one side or the other could connect. We never could figure out this problem. The second in evolved a horse rancher/farmer. The farmer would get disconnect from dialup after 30 seconds. Ever single time?.All of us took a shot at trying to figure this one out. Check all setting, reinstall the modem?etc etc?till one of the techs kept hearing a small pop in the phone line. This is where it gets amusing? we had the rancher turn off his electric fence and re-dial, sure enough?he was able to stay connected. The charge on the fence was enough to somehow cause the phone circuit to his house to short.
DSL:
I still stay in touch with people in that area and they say DSL service is becoming more widely available, however?the performance quality is going down hill. I agree that WiMax could potential be the best bet in rural areas, or even EDGE or other cell technologies. Towers are cheaper to deploy in the long run I believe.
Besides?.what else is there to do around that area. There are enough liquor stores, might as well have a good broadband connection to go along with them.
~Mike P.

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