I got messed around with my BT phone line.
Last year when i was having terrible trouble with Onetel (dialup) It would crawl, keep disconnecting or not do anything at all. I got onto onetel about this and they kept denying it was their problem (in retrospect they were right LOL)
This started mildly during xmas 03, it was only for a couple of days. But in the summer hols 04 it was terrible from july through to early september i was barely able to use the net for 22 days in total. being the fact it was dial up and the holidays i put 2&2 together and got 4.5
It turns out that the phone line supplied by BT was noisy, i reported the fault 3 times and nothing happened. But after the summer hols it miraculusly started working again. But around december it started messing up again (strangely no problem… my butt. It was noisy as heck.)
It was this point i found that Blue yonder cable worked out cheaper monthly than my BT phone line rental and onetel dial up so i made the switch.
– The point being if AOL is DSL/uses the phone line maybe the problem lies with the phone line NOT AOL. Worth checking.