" I have a feeling that there may be other issues: connecting the USB modem to a phone jack, kills the dial out ability of our home phone. It doesn't matter whether the modem is connected to the computer or not. I can get a dial-tone, dial a number and then nothing. Unplug the phone line to the modem and the home phone works again. Weird! I might bring it down to the next fix-it meeting, to see if anybody has any ideas..." I get to fix a lot of modems at work, hardware faults (Sky decoders) Check to see if it has a relay in it. They are small, about 18mm long and 5 or 6 mm high and wide. They can get sticky, sometimes giving them a tap will dislodge them, probably not for long though. Actually looking at a few modems here they often have larger relays of diferant dimensions. Some of our modems don't use relays at all, just transistors controlled with optocouplers. These don't seem to be prone to this sort of failure. ie, if they do fail they don't work at all. David