Reviews:
 ·Comcast
| Where's the Earthlink?! Fire this Douche! What happened to companies like Earthlink...10 years ago you could get dsl for fractions of the price of any big corp crap company and it typically worked better too! Where did they all go? If the trend had continued, you'd probably be able to get a 10M connection for about 10 bucks right now...I can't even FIND an advertisement of ANY sort on the net for such type companies or deals any more...MY options? Centurylink or Comcast...YEAH...F'em'both! |
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elray
join:2000-12-16
Santa Monica, CA | said by bdray222:Fire this Douche! What happened to companies like Earthlink...10 years ago you could get dsl for fractions of the price of any big corp crap company and it typically worked better too! Where did they all go? If the trend had continued, you'd probably be able to get a 10M connection for about 10 bucks right now...I can't even FIND an advertisement of ANY sort on the net for such type companies or deals any more...MY options? Centurylink or Comcast...YEAH...F'em'both!
Earthlink is still in business, and they still sell DSL, as well as cable in some franchises. The latter was the result of a merger settlement, the former is just traditional wholesale.
What happened was Earthlink never invested in plant, they're just reselling someone else's network, so they don't have much say in the product beyond their current contract. Meanwhile, the companies that DID pay for the copper lowered their prices, offered faster services, and the cable industry did as well, so firms like EL became increasingly irrelevant - though we still use them occasionally.
We actually had DSL service for under $10/month for two years - but I doubt that price-point was sustainable; copper maintenance requires union guys with bucket trucks - and someone has to replenish the N2 bottles. |
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 tschmidtPremium,MVM
join:2000-11-12
Milford, NH
kudos:8
 ·G4 Communications
·Fairpoint Commun..
 ·Hollis Hosting
| reply to bdray222
There are still CLECs (competitive local exchange carriers) out there. I just switched my DSL and phone from the ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) FairPoint to an ILEC G4 Communications. Much faster DSL at a significantly lower price.
But as elray  mentioned to be competitive requires companies collocate equipment at the Phone Company Central Office and rent customer copper pair (UNE) unbundled network element. Most alternate DSL provides are simply reselling phone company DSL. As far as I know there is no unbundling of the Cable Network so that is not an option for Cable.
Long term I don't know how this will play out as the ILECs convert from copper to fiber but that is many years down the road.
/Tom |
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