It seems nobody can answer my question. The caveats on the terms of service for DSL (in my area, FIOS is not yet available) say that no speed is guaranteed, and a customer service rep told me the actual speed depends on how far I am from Verizon. But nobody will tell me what that means. If I pay for 1.5 mbps DSL, what will I actually be buying? It seems like buying a pig in a poke.
What you are being told is not incorrect. Based on the distance your home is from the Vz central office, and the quality of the copper phone lines running from the central office to your home will determine the speed you can get over the copper wires.
The verizon representative probably has a dsl qualification test that they run to confirm whether you can get dsl or not. Call and ask if they can confirm before you subscribe for 1.5 mb service, that the service is available on your line. Their dsl qualification test might tell them the quality of your phone line.
The true test will be once you have the service, to run one of the many avaialble speed tests on the internet. (dslreports.com has one). I'm sure that if you subscribe to 1.5 and are not able to achieve those speeds, you can downgrade to the lower speed service at no charge.
When you run speed tests, you need to also keep in mind whether or not you are connected via a wireless connection to your router or hard wired. The speed test includes the pc/laptop connection to the router and wireless connections might be slower in general than hard wired connections to your router.
Hope this helps.
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