I live in rual tennessee, and about 6yrs ago i bundled my phone services with bellsouth. The main reason was to get dsl. I was told at sign up time that dsl was not available in my area, but that it should be within the coming year. Well 16 mo's later, after several attempts to get a definitive answer as to when dsl would be available, i kept getting shuffled from one bellsouth representative to another. Finally after what seemed like hours on the phone, i gave up, and wrote my congressmen, state, and local. I recieved a response from sen alexander, sympathized with me, and promised to "look into the matter" that was the last time i heard from him on the subject. My response from sen. First was "he was busy on national security" then a response from my state rep. Mr. Davis. He also sympathized, and soon i received a call from a bellsouth rep. On his behalf. Well i finally got my "definitive answer" she (the bellsouth rep) said that she was not informed of any plans to extend dsl to my rual area. I tried to explain that i was sure it would pay for the cost of expansion, that i was a cable tv engineer, and we did expansion studies quiet frequently, and that the area i lived in had approx. 2000 homes in the area. Nothing could persuade her to look into possible expansion... Well i felt as though i was lied to just to get my business. I can't get cable in their defense, they don"t get subsidies like the phone companies. I don't have the money to get satellite internet, at $50/mo. It's out of my reach on a retiree's income. I thought the usf (universal service fund) was for just such expansions into rual america. But my congressmen don't seem willing to pursue the matter. I'm still going to try to persuade my local, local, and federal congressmen to fight for the expansion into rual areas. After all that is why they enacted the usf.