[LS3SSRS]

sounds like you have an aerial drop coming off the pole to your house. this alone could very well be the problem. i've had place where the modem wouldn't train up at all, and it was due to a splice on the line running into the house so i had to hang a new drop. I guess if you called in a trouble to your phone company, and tell them your internet is down all the time, and say there's static on your phone line when it rains or it's windy. this should give the tech the idea that you need a new line ran. and yes, cable is shared with anyone who lives on the same street as you. thats why it'll slow down in the morning, lunch, supper time...when everyone else is on at the same time. GPON(Gigabyte Passive Optical Network) is what we call fiber optics. currently we're running trials to fiber buried areas, and yes, it's damn fast. up to 80Mbps.... to put that in perspective, the most common ADSL up here is 3.0 or 6.0Mbps. Although right now there's a 15 or 25Mbps option for ADSL which is just being released as well.