[jandrese]

This was my experience too. I was looking for something better than the 56k modem, but ISDN was 10 times as expensive and like 20% faster.

In the end I was stuck on modem until DSL finally rolled out in my area. One thing I miss about DSL was that it was open. You had your choice of several competing ISPs that offered service over the same lines. You could get some very nice fast service with lots of features for cheap. Locally run Usenet servers. Free web hosting. Free terminal server. Free Email. Static IP addresses. All the stuff that the monopolies don't offer anymore.

[paradox460]

Fwiw open access fiber systems have that now. In Utah you can actually subscribe to multiple ISPs over Utopia fiber, and it's mostly just an issue of configuring your terminal to talk to them.

Since it's a 100% eithernet network, any off the shelf device with an SFP cage can connect to it

[jandrese]

That would be nice. My local fiber option is Verizon or nothing. Verizon's tech works very well, but their customer service is terrible. Many people think that Verizon only pushed FiOS as hard as they did because it gave them a way to push out the competitors they had on DSL. Once DSL died off so did their drive to deploy FiOS.