Originally, the equipment US West was using on their end of DSL could not limit download speeds to anything less than 640kbps. As a result, 256k DSL subscribers could download at 640kbps. The 256kbps basically was the limit on upload speed.

As of August 9th, US West has installed equipment on the lines that limit 256 clients to 272kbps up and 256kbps down.

This will not affect current DSL users ("for the time being" according to US West).

However, any new DSL subscribers will be affected by this change.

Anyone getting DSL the basic 256k service from this point on will be limited to 256k, uploading and downloading.