Anyone got a SpeedTouch/decent modem handy?

[Tyler Aviss]

Hey,


I recently got setup with DSL, and things are more-or-less the usual
crap with Bell.
My rates are supposed to be (up to) 5mbps down and 800kps up.

The Bell installer had mentioned that I was on a direct run from their
CO... which immediately gave me some worries about speed. Sure enough,
my actuals are about 1.5mbps down and 500kps up. I checked with the
ISP, and the distance to the CO is a few km longer than would be
proper for high-speed DSL. He mentioned that there's definitely a fair
number of errors on the line at the current location, so the usual
result is that if I were to call Bell, they're drop my line-rates down
even more (but more stable)... so I'd rather not do that.
However, one possible ray of hope is that my modem is cheap, and it
sucks. Unfortunately it's also what was available when I bought it. If
I can get ahold of a decent modem (apparently speedtouch is good, as
is 2-wire), it may make a somewhat noticeable different. So if anyone
has one of these kicking around  - and I'm sure there are likely a
bunch of packrats in the group somewhere :-)  - then I'd really
appreciate if I could test it out and, if it helps, perhaps we can
arrange a sale/trade (I'm a packrat myself and I'm sure I've got some
toys that may be of interest).

Anyone who's interested please let me know.
Oh, and for reference I live in the Don Mills/Fairview mall area,
though I work downtown.



Thanks,


TJA

p.s. What do you do for internet when you have a monopolistic Telco who sucks!?
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