Comment 4 for bug 41833

Well, I did it. I managed to make "eciadsl-start" work the first time, at least under Kubuntu Edgy AMD64 (but probably it may work on other versions / platforms).
The trick was to change the following line of the script /usr/bin/eciadsl-start from:
  nice --20 /usr/sbin/pppd call adsl updetach
to
  nice --6 /usr/sbin/pppd call adsl updetach

With such a change the script doesn't hang any more inside pppd and completes succesfully.
My skill on linux kernel things is very low, but I suppose the niceness requested to the process pppd was too extreme. After many try-and-reboot I found that a value less than 10 is required to work correctly. In fact, pppd will spawn pppoeci (see /etc/ppp/peers/adsl) with -10 more niceness (don't ask me why).
I hope some skilled guy will find a more scientific diagnosis and remedy, in the meantime I'm happy with this.

In short, to make things work try the following:
1. Edit as root the file /usr/bin/eciadsl-start
2. Find the line with the word "nice"
3. Replace "--20" with "--6" (eventually try another number)
4. Save, close, reboot, run eciadsl-start as usual, pray God, say wow!