On Tue, 6 Nov 2012 09:56:48 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

DSL requires power to the modem.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. Senior moment. I doubt I'll ever buy a
generator but that still leaves the telephone.

And yes, if I were the phone company and saw that some customers wanted copper and some houses had copper and others had fiber, is it that much more complicated to service one OR the other?

I wouldnt' think so.

Especially given what we've just seen, how communications falls apart in less than a day in an emergency situation.

And when they sold my elderly parents on fios they told my mother her computer would be faster- she thought that meant it would boot faster, not that her email would be 0.000001 second quicker.

Exactly. For email and newsgroups, and mostly-text webpages it
makes no difference. I have a problem with my in-house phone wiring
that comes and goes, and for the last 3 years or so, I have a wire
from my upstairs bedroom/office down the front of the house to the
NID.

I was getting DSL so slow I coudln't watch even Youtube in real time,
but I found out the (posssibly cheaper than average) indoor round
white 4-conductor phone line I was using was too thin, so I switched
to thicker than average round white 4-conductor (R,G,B,Y) wire and I
tripled my download speed. Now even for the web it's fast enough and
I don't need no stinkin' fios.


They never mentioned that if her power goes out her phone service is gone in less than half a day. They don't even give the option to have a huge battery and bigger charger, not even at an extra upfront fee (what'd that be, a hundred bucks?)

Sort of like digital tv they said would work better, even with an
antenna, but it works worse for me.