That's a fact. Actually, my current ISP is a small local outfit I signed up with during the mid-90's. That was the dial-up days. I get ADSL from them now. I live 13K feet from the central office so I need good phone lines for decent ADSL. I've had trouble with download speeds falling several times during the years. When that happened the ISP called AT&T (who own all of the phone lines around here) and they rolled a truck, the tech fiddled with underground connections in the neighborhood and the speed went back up again. Now, AT&T is getting out of the ADSL business to push their U-Verse service. AT&T won't do work on their ADSL connections anymore and I'm stuck with rapidly failing bandwidth.I'm not sure if any of them "operate". They just provide poorly.
I won't touch Comcast with 10-foot pole. So, I have little choice but to sign on with a AT&T U-verse internet only deal. U-verse runs on a different system than ADSL and I need to buy their modem to use it. The U-verse connection is fiber-optic to the neighborhood and runs the last 5K feet on copper. AT&T will maintain their lines for U-verse. I'll disconnect my land line phone and end up getting better speed for a little less per month.

Moronic USPS. so I have no idea when they'll get here; at this rate, I may have the 2nd pair I ordered 2 days later before I have the first pair.