The $29 price is for 12 months. I called Comcast and they confirmed that they have individuals who sell direct at that price. I thought it was odd because Comcast sells it at a higher price but they said that the direct sales people do have that offer. That's what got me interested.
There is a symmetrical service similar to ADSL, called HDSL, which can also be configured for the DS1 rate of 1.544 Mb/s. It's cheaper than a standard DS1, but probably more expensive than ADSL.
The quality of service will depend on your provider. Some are better than others. This applies to both cable and DSL. DSL also often has the potential problems of dealing with different companies for the cable pair and DSL service and the resulting finger pointing. Also, the amount of sharing also depends on your ISP. In the case of my cable access, the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. This means that the DOCSIS channel is shared by less than 255 subscribers. On the otherhand, an ADSL system I was working on recently, two DS3s (2x 45 Mb/s) are shared by 448 lines.
So, all in all, you simply can't say cable or DSL is better, even though your personal experiences may say one or the other is superior.
I have DS1 and cable. From the cable co, their download speed is about 2-3 times that of my DS1. However, I can't get streaming audio from my favorite internet radio to play without rebuffering over the calble. Over the DS1, I can listen and still run my web servers, hosted sites, ssh to customers, and myriad other operations without having the stream rebuffer.
As for service, the DS1 had one problem due to squirrels chewing through the wires. It was repaired within a few hours and the DS1 is *monitored* by the provider. The cable, on the otherhand, can go out for days before a tech is dispatched and I have to call and deal with their inane support droids first before they'll acknowledge that there is a problem requiring a tech dispatch.
Also, and Nov. will mark the one year anniversary, the cable internet has had an issue that Optimum Off-line has yet to address. The fix is something they can easily fix but simply ignore the issue.
I just got off the phone from Comcast. They are running a special in our area that includes High Speed Internet, Digital Cable, HDTV, and a TiVo type setup with an 80 hour drive for $76/mo. for everything for 12 months, no contract.
You go to the regular rate which is $106/mo. But if they don't have another deal, I'll shop for another wideband connection. I take my email address with me and I keep the same ISP. I just need the connectivity so I can move around.
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.