Getting the phone company to even see a problem on a standard voice grade dial up telephone line is a major accomplishment.  The lines are not really guaranteed for dial-up data service and usually if you call them and they hear you talking OK on the line and you tell them you have a modem issue they don't want to hear it.

However, along with what happened at the Telephone company with the lightning hit, your "house" wiring (inside the house and the customer's responsibility) could have been affected too. 

A couple things you can do is disconnect all voice telephones in the residence and then see if that makes a difference (in case one of the telephone got hit and is causing the problems).  You can also try a different Telco wall jack in the house and see if that makes any difference.  If none of that helps, it's going to take persistence and getting the right telco person to really check the line (Call every day and sometimes they will get tired of you calling and really check it out or if there are a certain number of problem calls it can be considered "chronic").  I used to work with "Data" circuits and we could ask for a "Class A" inspection of the line, I don't know if they will do that for a dial-up voice circuit but it's worth asking.

Message Edited by fireberd on 04-24-200607:32 PM

A voice line is a basic "3002" voice grade circuit.  There are some parameters but very few. 

Distance is a factor and the number of "hops" (repeaters) can affect modem speed.  But, since it got zapped with lightning there could be carbon block problems and whatever that may not show up with just a cursory test.  More in depth testing is needed to find those.