Slow Dialup Connection--Help

I have only have access to dialup and have been using Earthlink for about two years.
I reside part of the year at Hilton Head Is,SC and have nothing but praise for my connection there--50.6 about 95% of the time. The remainder of the year I reside in a small mountain town in TN. There is only one local access number which was changed over the Winter. I used to connect at 44Kbs but now can only get 36Kbs--if I'm lucky. About half the time I only get 31.5.
The phone line from the house to the pole was replaced last year. There is usually a slow down in the conn speed when it rains. It has always been that way. I use Neo Trace to check on the connection and very often the first four jumps (All are Sprint) are very slow--2000-3000 ns. Then sometimes they are normal--250-450.Is Earthlink responsible for these nodes? Do they lease them from Sprint?
Believe me I have done the tech dance with Earthlink,obtained rebates,but nothing they do or check on speeds up the conn.I do not believe my settings--either on the modem or Dial Up Networking are in any way incorrect. I am forced to use the only Motorola modem driver available for XP which is for Win 2000.
My modem is a piece of crap Motorola SM 56 winmodem so in desperation I have ordered a $54. "performance" hardware modem by USR. Will this help?
The modem log does have a recurring entry that states that the DSR is low and in effect questions whether the modem is on.All other entries seem normal. I do not have actual connect or kick off problems--just a very sloooow conn speed.
Remember I have nice speed with the old modem while at HHI.
I am running Win XP Pro on an Thunderbird 950,256 MB ram,dual 80 GB Maxtor hard drives.
Any suggestions on improvement in conn speed or dealing with Earthlink tech support?

internet traffic in general has raised tremendously in the last 3-5 years

does the time at which you connect remain constant ... when i was on dialup or when im grabbing a huge file after 12pm est my connection speed is about 2x what it is between 6-10 pm

the hardware modem is deff the way to go but shouldnt increase your speed but will lighten the load from your cpu

A quick overview of the ISP is:

You will dial in to a Remote Access Server, which will have a certain amount of ports per unit (anywhere from 210 to 32,000) each port is normally equivalent to a DS0 (64000Kbps). This traffic is then multiplexed through an access link to the backbone and "off to the internet".
In busier periods, most ras servers will reduce the bandwidth of each new connection, rather than issue a denial of service because of capacity.

Your problem is probably that the ISP (Earthlink) has bought a certain amount of bandwidth and is probably nearing capacity at peak times, or/and the Telco is running multple ISP's on the RAS Server and will need to increase the bandwidth on the access link to the Internet.

My two Cents Worth (do you have change?)