OK. There is a way, but I'm restraining myself and have sent a polite letter to the company asking if they have a plan for improvement. Didn't mention the state in the letter. Am awaiting a response.
(7/21) UPDATE: This morning I got a call from the owner of Shoreham Tel. Like the rest of the staff, he was very nice and very professional. He was concerned about what speeds we're getting and said that we should expect a consistent 1 Meg where I'm located. He said that they expect to have a new DSLAM at the end of my road (a little over a mile) before winter and that we should be a good deal faster then. He said that everyone's set for 1.5 Meg max for fairness of coverage to all areas (close-in homes could be getting 4-5 Meg, but they are trying to make everyone equal (state regulatory?) and don't have tiered offerings) and that they were implementing new DSLAMs around the area. He said that at 1.5, that's about as fast as normal web sites serve up pages so that I should expect normal page-to-page web surfing to be as fast as I'd experience it on other ISPs (even faster ones). He said that the box near me had a shortage of voice ports currently (or something like that). He said that 256K (the package offered) was not acceptable, but didn't say why that's the package. I told him I'd keep a record of actual speeds and tracerts so that he could have a rich data set. We discussed what I may be able to do in my home to get rid of any dead ends on old phone lines that haven't been used for years. He said that my tracert hops should be around 30, not in the 40s as I have sees. Overall a good call and the kind of professional and courteous service that I have come to expect from Shoreham Tel. I'll keep the data set and follow up regarding whether they install our new DSLAM before winter and see how that impacts the numbers and report back here.
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