DSL?

Ummmm . . . not quite. Earthlink buys bandwidth from your phone company and resells it to you. No matter who maintains the last mile connection, you still need SOME kind of ISP, obviously. The prices are different now, but when I had ADSL, it broke down like this:

Phone company: (Verizon) ADSL 768/128, plus Verizon ISP service, $50/month TOTAL. This was the DSL connection plus e-mail, newsgroups, etc.

Earthlink: ADSL 1500/128 (through Verizon), plus Earthlink ISP service, $40/month TOTAL. This was the DSL connection (Verizon, purchased through Earthlink), plus e-mail, newsgroups, etc.

Note that the total cost was less money for faster service through Earthlink. I don't know what Verizon charges Earthlink for each ADSL connection, and I don't care. To me (the consumer), my total cost was less through Earthlink.

The prices are different now, but it wouldn't surprise me if Earthlink still has a better deal than the local phone company. And Earthlink isn't the only ISP. You might find an even better deal than that. My point stands . .. . if you want DSL, you don't need to deal with your phone company at all, unless you want to.

The local cable modem service is priced the same way. I can get (cable modem plus ISP) from the cable company for $60/month TOTAL or I can get (cable modem plus ISP) from Earthlink for $45/month TOTAL. In both cases, the actual cable modem service is from Comcast, and the speeds are identical. Guess which I'm using?

On any of these services, you can piggy-back another ISP. (but why would anybody do that?!?) For example, you could subscribe to "AOL for broadband", but that would be extra cost for service that you really don't need. If you were not an Earthlink customer already, I'm sure Earthlink would be happy to sell you service for about $20/month to use on your broadband connection, also. -Dave

they do so in USA as well, although less legally, and maybe more rarely, but the original ANALOGY seemed apt.

dj

I've had excellent cable service for over a year, and because of problems reaching my regional telephone service to handle anything, I'm trying to work up the courage to eliminate my land line. [I was forced to buy a cell phone, because their web site is such an abomination, I couldn't report my phone being out of service for 2 wks.]

Since I have this cell phone now, which suits my usage, and is cheaper, I'm looking for advice on the pros/cons of giving up a landline. Have you been without your's for long, and/or experienced any problems? And what area of the country do you live in? [If you don't mind telling me.] bj

With DSL the max speed is determined first by the distance from the DSLAM, and second by the customer's willingness to pay. With cable, distance doesn't really enter into the equation, just the willingness to pay, and the ability of the cable infrastructure to deliver data.

Thanks, I'll check on the Earthlink website. The main diff in phone co is that Verizon is MUCH BIGGER than my local co which has all of

180,000 customers. Even the phone co's phonebook is the pits.

I live in Southern New England. I was a Verizon Cell phone customer, until they screwed up their bills and refused to fix their mistakes. Luckily, I was near the end of the contract anyway. Been with Cingular for a year now. Even before we switched to Cingular, we had our land-line disconnected. There is no "con" of giving up a land-line, as long as your cell phone has good signal at your home and you are on the right rate plan. You need more ANYTIME minutes to cover the calls you would previously make on your land-line. For example, if you have to call customer service for ANYTHING (and customer service is never available at off-peak hours) and are on hold for 45 minutes just to get a human being on the line, that is eating into your anytime minutes, even if you called an 800 number. But generally, if your current cell phone plan is OK for what you use your cell phone for, just upgrade your cell phone plan to the next higher tier of minutes, or even TWO tiers up. Then you should be fine. In our case, we chose a cell phone plan that cost an extra $20 per month (shared minutes, 2 cell phones). With the extra minutes we got, we are nowhere NEAR using all our anytime minutes, and because we have Cingular, we have rollover minutes, also. (no chance of overage charges at all, no matter how long we are on the cell phone). Our land-line was averaging about $80-$100 per month, as long-distance is EXTRA CHARGE when you are using a land-line. So by spending the extra twenty per month to upgrade our cell phone plan, we are still saving about $80 per month. We are happy. We'd never go back to using a land-line unless no cell phone service at all was available.

Just be aware that if you use DBS (satellite TV service), there is a good chance that you will have to pay extra for it if you don't have a land-line. That really pisses me off, as it is ridiculous. I mean, the people most inclined to subscribe to DBS service are the people LEAST likely to still have a land-line. So sometimes I think it's like the DBS services are deliberately trying to piss off their best customers. Would a stereo salesman charge you extra for a set of speakers if you didn't own an eight-track tape player? Essentially, that is what the DBS services do when they charge you extra if your receiver isn't hooked to a land-line.

But enough of my DBS rant. There is no problem at all with ditching the land-line for cell phones only. Some people claim that land-lines are more useful for 911 use. Well, yeah, but the first thing a 911 operator asks you is where you are, regardless of whether they have that information in front of them or not. So I think that's kind of a moot point. -Dave

Well I know my (MEASURED) download speeds were faster on my ADSL connection. And they never slowed down. But as I said before, my ADSL line conditions were perfect. Thus, my experience is probably not shared by most ADSL subscribers. Still, I would stand by my assertion that if your line conditions are good, ADSL will give you better service than cable modem, even if ADSL is (on paper, at least) slower.

Many people will scream at the top of their lungs that cable modem is ALWAYS faster than DSL. But these are the people who have not used a GOOD DSL connection, so they are going by the numbers. That is, 3000 down is faster than 1500 down, right? Not really. I used to average 500K download (sometimes significantly faster) on my ADSL connection when (theoretically) I should have had about 150K down. I've never come close to downloading that fast on a 3000 cable modem connection, though DSL reports shows my average speed to be about 3400 (but that is a connection speed test, not download speed test). -Dave

Not if you pass out before you get a chance to respond.

There's something wrong with your logic there. If it tests at 3000+, that is your DL speed (since you're doing a DL for the test).

Can you expand a bit on that last claim? Why do you think that ADSL has the potential to be faster ? There's a physical limit and for ADSL that is near

8m/1m while EuroDOCSIS 1 cable has a 45m/10m bandwidth per 8MHz channel on a 800mhz coax medium.

CU

René

It's happened amny times that a person was able to get the call off, but not be able to converse with people on the other end. I've heard several of these calls on police 911 tapes on shows like the ones on Court TV channel. Without having the automatic address capability, they would never have been saved.

I'm sure cell phones will eventually all have automatic triangualtion when calling 911 that should pinpoint the call for the same capability.

I have no idea what you are talking about with connection speed. There is no such thing on cable (TTBOFK). You may have something like that on DSL protocols where there is a fixed carrier in use, but not on cable. If you receive a 1 MB file in n secs, you have your DL speed (not any connection speed).

I do. If you've been around networks for years and years, you think in Kbits not Kbytes (IMO).

The 'connection speed' you are talking about is the throttling on the cable modem and is essentially the maximum they will let you transfer data at. All DL speeds should be below that except for some possible short bursts.

Also the real speed is depended upon the server one is using for downloading; and I've found that when downloading a directory of files, linux updates, the various files are retrieved at different speeds depending on the size of the files & that the smaller files (less than 3 meg) show the reported speed slower. Many of the files were retrieved at 400 kBps which is a bit higher than my 3000 mbps for downloading using cable.

Then there are servers locking the ftp at 768 kbps, etc.

Your statement regarding that the DL speed is usually 1/10th of connection speed is an incorrect generalization. I had ADSL for 1 yr before cable internet was available & I can say that my connection with ADSL was at DL 384 kbps even tho it was supposed to be "up to 1.5 mbps"; and ADSL had many disconnects.

That's quite a stretch. If you are in that bad of shape, you'd probably not find the phone, even if it was attached to the wall. -Dave

No, it is a speed rating calculated by using your download speed. Connection speed is not the same as download speed. Download speed is lower, usually about 1/10th of connection speed. -Dave

Trying to steal the thunder from Arnold, "Dave C." on Sun, 17 Oct 2004 16:53:34 -0400 spoke:

That's an Unbelievable cost for a landline phone.

Here in San Diego, unlimited local service is about $30 a month, for $60 TOTAL, you get local AND long distance, unlimited.

I only make about 20 minutes of LD calls a month, and DON'T need to have a phone with me when I'm out (that's what answering machines are for).

And because I do have to call lots of people who use cellphones, I KNOW how bad the coverage and service are.

EXACTLY!!! Connection speed does not equal download speed. Download is measured in data throughput. Generally, you're doing pretty good if your data throughput is about 1/10th your connection speed. Like you, my ADSL connection did better than it theoretically SHOULD have. Theoretically, your 1500 ADSL connection should have been able to do about 150kbps, if it was a really good connection. Unlike you, my ADSL connection didn't have "many disconnects". But then, I used a router to maintain the PPPOE connection for me. I understand that Winpoet had a lot of problems. -Dave

OK, but if you run a speed test such as those on broadbandreports, your results are displayed in connection speed. That's not your download speed. The following explain it better than I can. -Dave

That's on DSL but cable modem is the same. For example, if your cable modem tested at 200KB/sec data transfer speed, then your download speed would be listed as ~2000kbps, but that's misleading. When you are downloading data, you don't think of it in terms of how many bits per second you are downloading. :)

So if your connection is 3000/256, for example, then your theoretical top speed is 3000, or a download speed of roughly 300KB/second, if all is working well. -Dave