I'm also an ex-Verizon, now Frontier DSL person. Land line is not technically required, but Verizon wouldn't (don't know about Frontier yet) sell you a UNE (Unbundled Network Element) directly. So, I bought my Verizon DSL circuit through Toast.Net who just gets the UNE wholesale from them and turns around and retails it back to me. $23.95 DSL monthly + $5 UNE add-on monthly charge (vs. $25 extra monthly for a landline/dialtone).

I'm way out at the end of the line. Got a 3 Mbps circuit but they'll only guarantee me 1.0. I usually get 1.0-1.2...

I want to keep my landline.

Voice reception is much better than a cell phone.

During the last hurricane, cell phones were not working for about 3 days because of damage to their towers.

Good old P.O.T.S kept on trucking even with power out for 2 weeks. :-)

Because of 'phantom power', and this is the only downside to fiber since an external power source is needed and when power is lost, the battery kicks in which of course has a life of 6-8 hours on standby, 1-2 hours of talk time, AND you have to have a corded phone, not a cordless system.

You can have both, which I have, but not just cordless.

Did you ever decide why speeds on downloads differ?

I do realize that the speed test sites would report similar results. I said that the speed test and the normal day to day speeds on downloads and uploads would be similar.

No.

It could be bandwidth throttling or Frontier/Verizon is doing some false advertising.

Or the browser maybe a factor.

Speedtest results on Windows XP and Slacko Puppy are identical, yet the actual browser download speeds of Slacko are at least 4 -> 10X that of Windows.

Just one of those mysteries. :-)

Like why does bread fall on the side with the jelly on it.

I'm curious about your speed testing. Are you comparing both Down and Up? Many people do not realize how powerfully Up affects Down. AFAIK all TCP/IP stacks throttle Down once Up is overwhelmed. This is why symmetrical DSL is less common and more expensive. Cable doesn't even offer symmetrical that I know of exactly for this reason.

Upload speed is .64 Mbps.