Cable Vs. DSL > Cable still best bang for buck; except where Fios available

Cable still best bang for buck; except where Fios available

I think the cable/dsl thing is very regional.

In my area it's Charter Cable, Verizon DSL (no fios yet), or dialup.

Now Verizon's plan is $30 for 3000/384 and that's their highest service level.

Charter's plans start at $48 for the 384/128 plan and $55 for 3000/256. Charter offers the highest level of service here but you have to pay a lot more for it - $67 for 5000/384. The funny part is the charter rep bragged about how excellent 384k is as an upload speed. I had to laugh.

reply to pb5k
I guess it depends on the providers themselves, and your area. In my area, I have two options: DSL or Cable. If I wanted DSL, I'd have to order a land line at a $55 install fee, plus $30 a month. I could then pay $37.95 a month for 3000/768 kbps DSL. That's almost $70 a month for slower service, and a land line that only telemarketers will call me on.

Or, I could get cable at 7000/512 kbps for $44.95 a month. Since my condo association pays for 83 channels of TV, my cable bill is a mere $44.95 a month for basic cable and internet.

I'd rather have more upload, but I believe Verizon filters port 25 and 80...those ports being open are a must for me.

So, why would I choose Verizon DSL when cable gives me so much more? Granted my sitution is a bit unique...I doubt anyone living here has DSL because of it.

-Dragasoni-
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»www.dragasoni.com

reply to rideboarder
Indeed, you are correct. Thanks for pointing that out.

reply to fAcEtIOUs
Thats what you think. When comcrap bougth out ATTBI and came into my town, and wanted to increase the prices, I switched to SBC Yahoo DSL. For 3 years I have had SBC, and at first I wasnt happy being capped at 768kb/sec but a year later when considering to drop them when my contract expired, they boosted the lowest maximum speed package to 1.5Mb/sec and 256kb/sec upload, for $29.99/month which at the time impressed me for the price. 6 months after that, I noticed a boost in upload speed to 384 kb/sec on 1500/256 package and the price dropped to 26.95/month and 6 months ago, when AT&T and SBC merged, they dropped the lowest speed package with a maximum of 1.5Mb/sec down and 384Kb/sec up to a price of $16.00/month. Around that time they called my house to say that the phone lines in my town were upgraded recently and that my line qualified to handle the SBC Yahoo DSL Pro Package with a maximum of 3Mb/sec down/512 Kb/sec up for $26.95 a month so I had them upgrade it, I am now happy getting a stable connection of 312KB/sec download and on average 52KB/sec upload. I was told that my line could handle the 6Mb/sec package since I am within the limits from the CO to get it. However at this time I am not in need of that kind of speed. I find this more convenient with the telcos that you have a choice on your bandwidth so that you can cut down your internet usage costs unlike comcrap that forces you to take at a minimum their 6Mb/sec service for over $50/month. So what if its half the bandwidth, its 3Mb/sec still fast enough and the differenc in time to download the same file on the same server would be by 3 seconds, very little difference. Also my upload speeds beat comcrap anyday and I am not under a contract under the terms of the Comcast download limit policy that many folks with comcrap have been complaining about. SBC has really cleared up its image, and stepped up its customer service. Also comcrap enforces those policies because they use a shared medium to implement the service instead of using a dedicated medium per subscriber to guarantee a certain speed like the telcos do. Thus the more users on a cable network, the more overhead is involved and degrade in performance. On the other hand with switched networks that dedicate bandwidth to subscribers, the network overhead does not increase as more subsribers are added to the network. In regards to your post, that DSL is a poor stepchild, you have been misled. The days when DSL on an average was slow are over. The reality is that DSL has been growing to areas not just where cable doesnt see as profitable, it moves into areas where cable also sees profitable like in my town and many others suburbs of big cities like Chicago. It also would be too expensive for a telco like SBC to upgrade their CO and telephone infrastructure to provide DSL service to just an area that is claimed to be unprofitable because they would not make enough money for it to be profitable. Also keep in mind, that there are distance limitations on DSL, such that a subscriber has to be within 15000 feet from the CO to qualify for the service. COs tend to be in the center of town in a suburban town or city, not in the countryside where there is lots of farmland. I dont find a city or suburban town with an average income of 100k a year and good schools to be unprofitable. There has to be enough demand for the service for even SBC to spend its resources on a particular location. Unless you mean unprofitable for comcast to upgrade its own infrastructure in an area with out of date equipment that it obtained in a buyout or a new subdivision of houses, not unprofitable by the average income of the population, that is a different story and is comcraps problem. In addition, SBC, now AT&T is planning to deploy fiber to the home. It will be interesting when they do that because the speed with fiber will far exceed beyond that offered on cable.