I emailed my ISP asking them to switch my dialup account to a different modem pool, as they recently bought out several smaller ISPs in town, and I got much faster connection speeds using my mom's dialup account on my computer. I wasn't even sure if they would give me an account on a different server, but not only did they switch me, they did it within an hour after I sent my email.
So now, instead of 28.8 connection rates, I'm getting more like 45.3 and 49.3 kbps. Plus, I never get disconnected, whereas it happened several times a day (or even several times per hour) with the other modem pool.