Cable vs DSL

For a power user, it's very dumb to compare ISPs just based upon bandwidth claims. More important is what they let you *DO* with that bandwidth.

DS

I'm a bit confused. Here in West Los Angeles, I have the option of getting either DSL or cable. For about the same price of DSL offering a maximum of 1.5 MPS, I can get cable that now claims to offer a minimum of

3 MPS and a possible max of 6. I've spoken to a few people with existing cable access, and they've told me that the usual negatives linked to cable, such as slow downs in speed when many people are online doesn't often happen in reality. They also say they've never experienced a down connection. Thus, I have to wonder why anyone would choose DSL in this situation. Am I missing something?

Al Bardo

snipped-for-privacy@nospam.net (Al Bardo) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net:

Maybe.

First, for me to get a cable Internet connection, I'd have to deal with my local cable company. Doing business with my phone company is a pleasurable experience compared to that.

Next, if I had a cable Internet connection, I'd have to use my cable company as my ISP with all the associated grief of their email and news servers. Buying a DSL connection from my phone company allows me to choose my own ISP from among bunch offering service in my area.

BTW, my phone company (Qwest) sells me a 7Mbps connection, not just

1.5Mb; I actually train up at 6Mbps, and see consistent 5Mbps transfers from my ISP's own servers.

Al Bardo wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.verizon.net:

I've had both and I didn't notice any difference. The reason I dropped the cable and switched to DSL was purely a customer service issue (money was a minor issue also). I needed tech support on a holiday weekend from my cable company/Road Runner. My understanding was that I had 24/7 tech support. Well the best either the cable company or Road Runner could do was leave a note for someone to call me on Tuesday, this was on Friday or Saturday. I told them not to bother and called SBC on Tuesday instead. It turned out that I could get DSL at about the same speed (1.5 Mbps at the time) for $30 per month less than cable. I haven't looked back since. The cable company now offers internet access at up to 5 Mbps and for a few extra bucks I might be able to get 6 Mbps DSL service but the 1.5 Mbps is fine for my purposes.

Are you sure you can only get 1.5mbp in West Los Angeles. I'm in Santa Monica and get 3 mbps with Verizon DSL.

For me, I could only get the old 768/128 speed since I was so far away from the phone company's Central Office (C.O.) And, at the time, Comcast didn't offer internet service, so I was stuck with a consistent 700 download speed. At least it was better than dialup.

Switch to 9 months ago and Comcast FINALLY offered internet service. As far as I know it's not "distance restricted" like DSL, so I have a great connection that tests well above 4MB all the time with an upload speed of

700 plus. So, it was a no brainer to go with Comcast Cable and drop the DSL line.

Bottom-line, in my experience - DSL is subject to distance - Cable is not.

Good luck,

- Tom C.

Verizon techs told me that my max DSL speed is 1.5 because of the distance from the switching station or whatever it's called. I'm just over 10,000 feet from that office, and you must be under that distance to get over 1.5. You must be closer to a switching office than I am.