> If your line was noisy good luck.

I remember calling AT&T (or maybe it was SBC by then) about flat out unreliability of our internet connection and the answer was "If you can carry a voice call, we do not care".

FWIW, the problem with our lines did eventually get so bad (although, we finally had cable internet by then) that even a voice call was unusable. Turned out one of the runs (not even the drop to our house) was allowing water to get into the lines. and that was the cause.

Will add, after they fixed that problem was when they got really aggressive about marketing DSL...