"Jim Adney" wrote

What do people out there get these days? Is switching local telco
providers likely to make any difference? Is there any chance that the
14.4k is just a smoke screen that I need to poke thru a bit to get
better results.

We all had modem problems at one time. Find out from your telco TS what is
the distnace from your house to their equipment. Overk 10K feet will not
give you good connection.

I know it worked well before, but something has changed. They could have
re-routed the lines, although unlikely.

Changing local service providers over the same POTS will not help. You will
connect via the same lines and hardware. If you can get phone service via
cable company, that is a guarantee of 50K conneciton. Been there.

Your ISP may have changed their modems and they are not as compatible with
yours - that could be the reason for speed drop

Using another dialup number may give you anther set of hardware modems. It
can help that way. Putting area code in front of your number may help too,
as you use different ckts in the phone company.

You phone lines could have gotten noisier over time. Loose connection,
cables swaying in the wind, etc.

An finally, your modem may have deteriorated as well. They do fail - have
seen it.

Modem connection troubleshooting is the most frustrating part of a PC. I
have spent more time on that, than on all other things combined.

Rich