Living in a rural part of North Central Florida (High Springs, Fl
32643), I am outside the 18,000 ft. limit for DSL, have no cable TV
service, and am not ready yet to try satellite ISP accounts.  Alltel,
my phone company, says we will probably never see DSL in the rural
area.

I have a local (Gainesville, FL) ISP who believes that Alltel's tariff
requirements are that Alltel must provide me with a minimum connection
speed - he recalls 19k as the lowest dial-up modem connect speed.

Presently, my neighbors and I are connecting as low as 9k and at times
as high as 28k (rare) - these numbers are from speeds provided by
on-line broadband speed test Web sites where you enter their URL while
you are on-line and they test uploads and downloads and report back
your present connect speed. We're always rated as "Poor!". Alltel has
come out to test the lines but that 'test' is simply hooking their headset to
our phone line and saying "No noise on the line" and then leaving.

Does in fact Alltel have a tariff requirement to provide a level of
connect speed for High Springs, Fl users?

Probably not. You are more than 18,000 ft. from the c.o. I had a
friend who lives in Alaska, same problem, he was the only home at the
end of line, more than 10 MILES, from the c.o. His fastest speed was
28.8 bps. There are a few things you can do, bob. First, make sure
your drivers are the latest for the modem. Second, you can tweak the
old 56k modem and optimize it, for maximum speeds. Go to
http://www.dslreports.com/ and click on "tools" download
"TCPOptimizer". That may help. I had my 56k tweaked to 53,333 bps. I
trade stocks, so I needed to get a cable modem. Here's another site to
read all about 56k modems, their limitations etc. It really helped me
before I got the 56k modem to higher connect speeds.
http://www.56k.com Hope this helps, I know what it's like to wait
"forever" for a download, with a 56k modem. PS- I still have my
Netzero dial-up, you never know when the cable will go down.

One thing that has helped on my rural connections that I learned from
others with the same problem was to order Caller ID service.  It seems
that Caller ID requires a high quality line/connection and so the
phone company upgrades your line to accomodate it.  Something they
have little or no incentive to do just to increase your ISP connection
rate.

If you don't really want Caller ID, order it and use it for a month or
two then cancel the service after the line has been upgraded.

This worked in my phone region. It may work in yours also.