If you have ever joined the PEQ server on any accounts (or any of your friends with the same issue have), try this:
http://www.peqtgc.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=10152
That will get your client pointed directly to the PEQ login server, which you can use to test if it shows servers or not. You can actually change your eqhosts.txt file to point to "Host=login.peqtgc.com:5999" and login without having a PEQ account, if you just want to test if the Login Server shows servers at all.
This is a good test to see if your issue is specifically with the EQEmu Public Login Server, or if it happens on all Login Servers. If the same issue happens on the PEQ Login Server as well, then it is most likely that you have a port issue. That means your ISP may be blocking ports required to reach the Login Servers. I think it would be specifically ports 5998 and 5999 (depending on if you are on Titanium (599
or any of the newer clients (5999)).
Another test might be to see if the Titanium client works, which uses port 5998. Though, I doubt they would specifically block just 5999 only.
What doesn't make sense is that you said it did work at least 1 time for one of your friends locally. That doesn't make much sense, as if a port is being blocked, it will fail 100% of the time, not 99%.
Another possibility could be congestion on the network to reach the US, but you seem to be getting to these forums fine, which means you can reach this destination without too much packet loss.
It is very possible that this issue will resolve on its own within a couple of days. If the local ISP is having major problems affecting multiple customers, they should be well aware and should be working hard to resolve it ASAP. Though, it never hurts to call them for support assistance and inquiries.
There could be several issues from the ISP that could cause issues like this. One might be if they are having problems with route reflectors, which they should be able to resolve fairly quickly. Another might be if their DNS servers are having issues. If that is the case, you might be able to clear the problem yourself by opening a command prompt and typing "ipconfig /flushdns". That may force updates that would otherwise take a while to get. You might also try manually changing your DNS settings on your router or PC to point to a public DNS server that is known to be reliable such as 8.8.8.8 (google).
If none of the above helps, you will probably just have to keep working with your ISP to identify the issue and get it resolved.