We paid for the modem, and they rebated it in full. So we own it.

We have the slowest DSL...and it is pretty fast to us.
There is a "faster" one too, they offered, but we don't get it.

DSL has been pretty good. However, if you have a PROBLEM, they charge ($100 bucks) now to talk to you over the phone to fix anything! We discovered this last DEC when we had trouble staying on the net. It turned out that our Netgear router was working sometimes and sometimes not. My husband's new computer sort of fried it...some encrypted code from the government that the router did not support.
Support is not great with AT &T, it is in the Phillipines for AT &T and it is hard to understand the person answering questions. They do download programs on your computer (some of which I disabled), so they can look at your system remotely.
They can be enabled in start up fairly easily when you need them..

So it is good as long as it works. We have had the modem now for over 2 yrs, and it still works. The router we replaced last Dec with the Linksys...so far no problems with it.