Oh brother you should 'try' living in rural Texas and just see what phone service is like. Sucks is too nice a word. Our phone company does not even gaurantee a digital capable line. Voice only. I'm lucky enough to get some digital capacity. I can occaisionally get up to 8k or so transfer rates. But that only holds so long as the local population does not exceed the number of lines we now have. When that happens they start doubling them up with carrier setups (whatever that is) and we will get no dial up ability at all. I'm forty whole miles from austin.
The carrier setup you're talking about is a called a DAML. I've put a few up. It basically merges two dial tones together over a copper pair. But still, copper analog from the switch can handle 56k connections. There may have been an earlier switch with lower capabilities but if that's the case you're below the common standard.
Blame the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Phone companies don't profit off of upgrading their lines. So they don't bother to.