"Pete C." wrote in
ter.com:


"Not@home" wrote:

I've had both DSL and cable. In my opinion all the talk about sharing
service and bandwidth is, while technically accurate, absolutely useless
for the ordinary user. Unless you spend your time uploading and
downloading huge files, you will never notice whether you are using the
faster or slower service. I routinely email large jpg files, and never
saw a difference between the two services.

I had two phone lines, and dsl would not work on the newer line.
Apparently the switches at the phone company CO were more robust years
ago and could handle DSL, while the newer switches won't. Since I live
too many yards from the CO, this affected my service.

As to installation, my DSL company sent very clear instructions, and as
they were a local company they were easy to call with problems. A lot
of the difficulty with DSL installation appeared to involve coordination
with the phone company, and as my DSL provider was a local company, they
had the connections to get things done promptly and right. Alas, my
local DSL company was gobbled up by a national company, and the good
personalized tech support disappeared. When I called tech support and
their first question was what state I lived in, I saw trouble on the
horizon and after a few problems, I switched to cable.

Perhaps because my cable company was just getting into the business, I
had some problems with installation. One tech insisted that since my
cable drop ran through an underground conduit, it was getting wet, which
was affecting my service. I drained the conduit (there was some water
in it) and the cable worked, but then went out again. The next tech
pointed out that the drop was waterproof, and the problem was with the
cable modem they had installed (apparently an outdated model). He
replaced it and now for a couple of years the service has been flawless.
They even offer to come out (for a fee) and hook up a second computer,
but I was able to do that on my own easily.

So I think, unless you get DSL from a good local company, cable is the
better option, as you are then dealing with a single company, and as
they often have packages that save you a bit on your TV cable or cable
phone.

I have both cable and DSL (different locations), and both have pretty
much worked just fine after minor installation hassles on the carrier
side. The DSL did have one brief outage when a line crew managed to
change me to a bad pair, but it was resolved pretty quickly. The cable
has had about two sub hour long outages per year after major storms in
the area which seems perfectly reasonable to me. The DSL probably has
had similar short storm outages, but I don't use it all the time so I've
not noticed.

As for speed, yes, for typical use there is little practical difference.
This may change though as more full res video content is delivered over
the Internet and the difference in the download lead times before the
program you ordered is ready to view is noticeable.

some broadband ISPs are now charging by how much data you download per
month,with surcharges when you exceed some arbitrary limit.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
kua.net