UCAN

I had a similar issue. I had the 1.5 mb download and for years it was fast, then I started noticing it slowed down. I called SBC/ATT they came out multiple times, to fix it. They really bent over backwards to fix this (I was amazed as it was the phone company) They replaced the wire from the pole to the house, swapped the filter box on the wall, swapped the wire pair I was on that went back to the CO (twice). This went on for a couple of weeks to no avail, they got the speed back up to 768kb but it was still half of what I had for a long time. Then one of them mentioned there was a new "Fiber" Dslam right up the street and that I should ask to move onto that. Since I was one of the first in my area to move to DSL from cable back in the late 1990's I was still on a copper pair of wires running all the way back to the CO (central office). I tried but the managers couldn't move me. So I upgraded my service to their next highest speed (3mb) and in order to do that they had to put me on that Fiber box. The bad part of that was I had to cancel my service and wait to go to the new service, so I was dialup (for the first time in 10 years) for about two weeks. Ugh, that was painful, the whole family was on my case over it. Anyway to get back to the story, once we were put on the fast network things were looking up, but I was still not at 3mb but was over 1.5mb so everyone was happy. A few months later I found a place in the wiring in my house that had had been "stapled" through. I replaced that phone line from the box and we were up to 3mb downloads. So it wasn't all the phone companys fault.
I was told by the Phone techs that after the one year was up I should just ask to be downgraded to the 1.5mb plan and they wouldn't move me off the fiber Dslam. But I am used to the 3mb speed and won't go back unless I have to for money reasons. As for your $35+ that seems extreme. You have to call them every year and ask for the newest/cheapest plan, otherwise they bump you back up to their highest cost plan. You can check the pricing out on the web. I am paying $24.99 for the 3mb plan. I think the rate is around $19 for the 1.5mb plan right now. Call them and ask for it. One other thing, the farther away your house is from the Dslam the slower the speed, its how ADSL works but I am pretty sure they won't sell you DSL unless you can get 768kb download speed. Use this like to find out your download/upload speed. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ The fastest speed you will see from any website is determined by the speed of the server at the other end, that is normally where the slowness is. Also, cable might be better as you can usually get higher speeds since it doesn't have the distance problems ADSL has but you are still limited by the speed of the web server you are surfing. -Bill