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It's not hype, the distance is legite to a point. The test they run probably uses engineering record that show side leads on cable pairs which adds extra capacitence to the line. When DSL first came out I lived in Quincy, and I was about a mile or a little more from the CO (Central Office where the dial tone orgiginates). They tested my line and told me that I was 1200 feet too far according to the engineer. When I went ot work the next day I tested the line, and came up about 160' tooo far. So I called them back, and got the engineers name and number ( they only gave me that info cause I work for them) and called the engineer. I told him my tes came a lot closer to the working length, and I wanted him to give the go ahead, and he reluctantly did, telling me they could not guarantee speed. I told him that was fine, it still had to be faster than my dial up. Another interesting thing, some phone lines work on units called Litespans, or other units called Slc's. These are basically systems that use fiber optic cable or T1's between the CO and a Shack out in the neighborhood. From the shack in the neighborhood the lines are fed through electronic cards, depending on the system each cards splits off 2 or 4 dialtones from the T1's or fiber and switches them over to copper cable. Now the company does have the technologie to offer it on these systems, however they don't in every location yet as the cards are exspensive ( they had to engineer a special card just for DSL) and are still not readily available. I would call them and ask them if you are on a Litespan, or a SlC (pronounced slick), and if you are if there is anyway that they could put you on a copper pair, and if the copper pair would not be too long for DSL, sometimes they have about 100 pairs of copper out there for people wanting the DSL. One other thing if they tell you that you are on copper ask them if the copper pair can be conditioned, like having side leads removed to lose some of the extra capacitence. Good Luck and please don't mention my name as this is all proprietary info, tell them a "Friend" works for them...
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