Joe,
What is Fios, never heard of it. Does Verizon still offer it?
Do you agree with my verizon sales rep that the issue you mentioned that I'm suffereing from will evaporate once I'm with Verizon, ie, he said I'm not sharing a line with the neighborhood...

Verizon FIOS

J,
link did not work

Strange, it works just fine for me.

Working now.
Ok.:
this is cable again! and double price of DSL!
So I would paying double ( like Time Warner),
and getting crappy, congested, slow, service, as I'd be sharing with neighbors again, no?

FiOS is not cable again. It is broadband fiber optic and you will have a dedicated channel brought directly to a converter box installed in your house. The channel is not shared with anyone else and it is as straight DHCP or fixed IP address connection with no userid or password logon required. There is literally a single unshared optic fiber connection from the wall of your house all the way to the central office where it goes into the world wide web where, of course, the bandwidth is shared with every internet user in the providers network and from there every internet user in the world. You will have a userid and password for email access and/or account management but that is independent of your internet connection. There is sufficient bandwidth available in that channel to also provide telephone service and even television programming where available, but that will not impact your internet load or connection speed because the maximum bandwidth of the optic fiber is so great.

Some cable and telcos provide a semi-fiber optic service that is fiber to a neighborhood distribution point and plain old telephone service copper or coaxial cable from there to your house. FiOS is fiber all the way to the interface to the copper wiring inside your house.

Thanks Joe, sounds like the gold standard. Very pricy.

But back to my orginial question to you--

Verizon sales rep -- ie, he said I'm not sharing a line with the neighborhood. Is that the truth?

Yes! Your DSL signal will be riding the same dedicated copper pair to the local switching office that your POTS (plain Old Telephone System) line uses.

Joe, so I "wont" be sharing my internet browsing with my neighbors as I'm now doing with cable modem?

Your location has to be within a few miles of a local switching office before the connection speeds they offer start to drop off, so you're only not sharing with others over that distance. Compared to modern cable, DSL really doesn't offer any advantages. FIOS is not cable exactly, it's a fiber-optic connection and is generally much faster than both cable and DSL. That's why it's more expensive. You're getting a lot more out of it. If your cable performance is bad and the speed test reflect lower than expected speeds then you need to complain to your cable company until they fix the issue. You can even squeeze them for a credit for the time period you haven't received satisfactory service.