They have been doing it in Australia for maybe 6 or 12 months now. It's called "Naked ADSL" here. I've not heard of anything like what you're suggesting Cris where your pair would get taken away from you.

It is a similar system though I'd guess and the original issue was always you had to have a POTS service before you could get ADSL so that the line stayed allocated.

In my case to actually go to the naked service it would actually cost me more and get me less since I have a pretty good deal already. Plus the phone call rates I get are quite reasonable for the odd local or international call (international ones are very good actually I think).