That very well may be the way it works in SWBT areas, and it 
may very well be that way here in this particular Sprint 
territory (the old United Telephone, Sprint/United, etc.), too.
I'll check with my ISP again, but I understood him to say that
DSL connections that THEY offer are dedicated pairs from the 
customer premises to the CO to the ISP.  I'm not very knowledgeable
about this stuff, but the only thing Sprint local furnishes here
in regards to my DSL connection is the wire and the technician 
who hooks it up.  I don't even rent the line, the ISP does that.

Aaron wrote:
> 
> For those of you who care, here's how it works...  This is specific to ADSL, SDSL
> works kind of the same way but not exactly, AND, this is just a quick rundown of the
> Kansas City area...
> 
> Packets flow from your house via your phone lines (the same phone lines you talk on,
> just a different frequency) to the Central Office of Southwestern Bell (the CO).
> There is basically a large ring strung between the central offices (last time I
> checked this was a DS3 (45MB), but could have been upgraded by now) that links all
> of them together.  Your ISP then buys bandwidth from SWB (normally another DS3)
> specifically to carry DSL traffic, which is plugged into a router at thier location.
-- 
Dave Parker/DLP, Inc.    dlparker@dlpinc.com    www.dlpinc.com