Read this before you decide what you want/ what you will put up with; this is from my personal experience with more than one new pc:  http://www.dsl.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3734

I tried signing up with At&t/Yahoo and Covad because of their great rates but both said it wasn't available where I live.   I also tried Comcast and they denied me because I don't have cable with them.  But then I tried signing up for their cable first and was still denied.  It seems the only one I can get is what I currently have which is Embarq (or Earthlink).  That costs me $60 a month!  Does anyone know of a provider that cost less than that, that is widely available??

Don't move here if you want DSL!  I'm in North Dakota, about 50 miles North West of Grand Forks.  The local telco, POLAR Communications, Inc. is the only provider of DSL where I am (a town called Pisek).  Their dialup is so crappy that I know people who have just plain given up and have stopped using the Internet!  I had their dialup for about 10 months.  It seemed O.K. at first, but within a few weeks, POLAR's servers would get stuck on stupid after about 10 minutes on line.  I notified the company and received a rather terse response "strongly suggesting" that I update my anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, empty my browser's cache and all the newbie yadda, yadda crap (Obviously, a good Customer Service attitude is equivalent to rocket science for them, because when I called to discontinue their dialup, I got, "O.K.!  Bye!"!).  My Anti-virus and anti-spyware automatically update daily and a small routine that runs in the background empties the cache daily.  I finally found that I could get Intergate dialup for about half what POLAR was charging ($14.95), so went there.  The connect speeds are excellent and I'm happy with INTERGATE, as far as dialup is concerned.  I am unable to get DSL here, other than POLAR and from those who have that, I hear it's comparable to a mediocre dialup.  Not only that, they want $125.00 "setup fee" (DSL must be the equivalent of rocket science to POLAR, too!) and a monthly modem rental fee of $10.00.  They say one must use their "proprietary" modem, it suggests to me that they use some kind of non-standard protocol, which must be "patched or ported" to  make it work in the real world.  I figured that with all the low-cost DSL deals, they might have adjusted their rates, so I went to their web site.  They had adjusted their rates, all right!  It went from $36.95 to $39.95 per month for their low speed DSL!  I don't want to consider them anyway, as I would feel as though I'm rewarding them for crappy dialup service.  Please!  Would some real Internet Service Provider buy this SCHMUCK outfit so we can get some service here?!!!!!

 Not happy with Verizon DSL, have had it for almost 2 years and nothing but trouble.  In all this time I have had 3 Techs out to the house and find out that the first one was a phone tech and couldn't work on DSL.  I thought the 2nd fixed the problem only to find having same problem, keep getting "Local Area Network- A newtork cable is unplugged" erron on screen and of course it is in the middle of what I am trying to send.  Last tech stated the others didn't connect it right.  While he was here I got great speed on downloads, today back down to so slow I feel like giving up.  Try DSL service other than Verizon is my recommendation!

I could be mistaken, but it a DSL provider may be in violation of federal laws if they discontinue service because someone wants to switch their phone service to a company like Vontage which relies on on DSL to provide customers with phone service.  I guess companies like Vontage have dealt with this problem before so I would call them to clarify any questions and then call the State regulatory agency for utilities or phones.