Bruce L. Bergman wrote:

Thanks for the warning - if they ever try this on us, I get it in
writing that they leave us one line coming in on good old Copper, and
going straight back to the C.O. with no pair gain in the middle that
doesn't have permanently installed generator backup.

You might get them to agree to leave the
copper in to the curb, but probably not to the
central office. A dirty little secret is
that some central offices don't have enough
copper to some neighborhoods to leave unused
lines connected.

My neighborhood connects to the CO through
some sort of a mux a couple blocks from my
house. Not only is a "dry pair" to the CO
not available, dialup modems can't go faster
than about 22k baud through the mux.