Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem!

wilstephens writes: "Found this article on CNet about the latest trend of people dumping broadband in favour of their modems. Cheaper, and more reliable service, apparently! 'Katy Ling, a software consultant who had her home wired for high-speed Internet access last year, did what many technology analysts said would never happen: She bailed out of broadband...'"

Comments

Going back

[Alomex]

I'm seriously considering going back to telephone modem. I'm using cable modem here, and the service seems to go down every other day and be no faster than 100Kbps. Before that I had DSL and that worked like a charm, but there's none to be had around my new house.

Not me I say!

[Com2Kid]

After that time I got those 2MBp/s download speeds over my cable modem, there was no way that I was going back.

I reguarly get 300KBp/s per file transfer from fileplanet.com, and even faster tranfers from other sites.

Being able to download a 5meg Shockwave Flash file in the time that it takes a companies logo to fade onto the screen also helps.

Alot.

Ping times under 100ms are also great. So is that nice west coast backbone that @Home has for its users.

I originaly started out with TCI@Home then AT&T bought them up. Now I have AT&T Internet Access, Cable Television, and Cell Phone service.

And you know what? I am being treated great. The few times that I have had to call text support were great, hell, the tech guy and me were swapping anti-MS jokes back and forth. The uptime is incredible, especialy after AT&T took over from TCI, and I have not had a service interuption for, God, almost a year now! The few service interuptions that I did have in 1q01 all lasted less then 10 minutes except for one that had was 30 minutes. After that there has not been a single problem for ages now.

Hell, when my power went out my UPS kicked in and I was still able to surf the internet. Cable Modem service was still up. Now _THAT_ is what I call robust service.

Is that reliable?

[barzok]

Maybe your users select "modem" with the thought that if they select higher bandwidth, you'll force-feed them a more graphics/flash-heavy site, and they don't want that?

Or maybe they think cable modem == modem?

If I had a dollar for every website form I filled out truthfully, I'd be a very poor man.

Blame it on the Baby Bells

[Infonaut]

Two years ago, PacBell was putting out all of these offers for DSL - cheap, fast, etc. The problem was, they didn't have service rolled out yet. The parent company, SBC, was offering something they didn't have the capacity to actually implement. Why? Because they were scared of cable companies and pioneering DSL providers like Covad.

When I first made an inquiry with PacBell about getting DSL service, they told me I was too far out. So I contacted Covad, and lo and behold, they hooked me up. I had service through Fastpoint Communications. It was awesome. I had true, always-on static IP, blazing-fast DSL.

But Fastpoint had a difficult time getting DSL subscribers, due largely to the fact that PacBell was able to jam marketing messages down the throats of phone customers, not to mention TV ads, magazine articles, and the like. Of course, the fact that most PacBell customers were having installation nightmares was beside the point.

I actually had one friend who spent six months trying to get connected through PacBell. FIVE home visits later, they finally got it working. Another friend actually had to contact the California VP of Sales for PacBell in order to get some action on his stalled installation. Talk about a bait and switch tactic.

In any case, Fastpoint went belly-up. So Covad passed me on to Earthlink. Whatever problems Earthlink is having seem to be self-created. Their phone support people are truly awesome - great attitude, very helpful. But it took a while for my service to get started, and I was actually DSL-less for two months. Once it started working, I was moderately satisfied with my new PPPoE (yech!) connection, but not as happy as I'd been before with Fastpoint.

Then I wanted to add a second phone number to my apartment. I had to switch to PacBell for my DSL because since they own the voice line, the only way to get a true DSL Internet and voice on the same line setup is if you use PacBell!

So now I am using PacBell, with an annoying PPPoE, dynamic IP setup. I've just put in an order to convert over to static IP, which means I'll now pay $70/mo., and I'll have five IP addresses, when all I really need is one, perhaps two.

I work from home, so fast, reliable Internet access is key for me. I use PacBell because I basically have no other choice. They submarined the competition, played every stall tactic in the book, and now they're a local monopoly.

Will there be any action on this at the state or federal level? With the current economic and political climate, that's highly unlikely. To me, the subversion of competition in broadband was the real tragedy of the dot-bomb crash. I don't give a crap about pets.com, but we all lost out on a great opportunity when the Baby Bells subverted true competition.

Dump broadband? Uh, no.

[Bowie J. Poag]

The kinds of people who end up dumping broadband fall into two categories.

1) "I cant find anything useful to do with it!"
2) "Oh, help me, my broadband service has been a nightmare!"

Both of which are fairly stupid conclusions. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean its not there--There are plenty of things on the net for which broadband is perfectly suited for. Here, i'll give you a real world example: I stopped watching TV news about a month and a half ago. Now, I just pull in feed via DSL from CNN and ABC News. I don't find much sense in 24 hour nonstop anthrax coverage, so I omit that crap from my feed. Tipped over vending machines have killed more people in the past 10 years than Anthrax has killed in the past 50 years. I'm surprised the nightly news isn't giving you stooges hourly vending machine updates.

Anyway, onto the second category. Broadband service providers by in large don't have their acts together, but thats not the technology's fault. Its the fault of the people handling it. We as Americans are far too impatient with such things. We just want to plug it in and see it go, and no form of broadband works that way. People who complain about broadband service are the same people who complain that their tires get dirty from off-roading. Wait until the damn road is paved, then travel on it.

For the record, i've had DSL for the past two years or so. I never had a problem with the technology end of it -- But I have had a problem with the human end of it. Namely, inept technical support, and billing, which is to be expected whenever theres a big rush to do anything.

Getting rid of broadband is like saying we should get rid of cars because they cost more to maintain than bicycles. No thanks.

Cheers, and yes, PROPAGANDA is still running,

Dialup's better on all counts but speed..

[Myself]

and it's portable, too. You can't take your cable modem out of town and use it in an El Cheapo motel room!

My MediaOne cable modem was horrible. For the 3 months I had it, it was literally down more often than it was up. I spent more time on dialup than on cable during those months, and I'm glad I didn't cancel my dialup ISP in anticipation!

When it was working, the speed was as advertised. No complaints there.

Then MediaOne took it upon themselves to portscan my machine. They found FTP open, which I'd set up the previous day so I could get to some files from a friend's house. Anonymous access was disabled, I made sure of that. They then proceeded to try standard guest and visitor logins, which of course didn't work. Then MediaOne (this is all in my logs, coming from their machines!) started guessing common words, one of which worked. Well duh, I hadn't exactly locked the box down like Fort Knox. I just wanted to set myself up a little remote file dump! So MediaOne gets in, notices I have some MP3s on my drive, and proceeds to yank the plug.

I get a nice letter in the mail a week later, saying I've been terminated for violating the service agreement. Because they hacked _my_ machine. The RIAA has like-minded friends already if they plan to move in this direction.

Needless to say, I've been on a POTS line with a v.90 modem ever since. The account goes with me when I travel, it's never down for more than 5 minutes at a time, and in the extremely rare event that my favorite POP is busy, there are two more within my local calling area. Cable just can't offer that reliability or portability.

Not that phone lines are perfect! The Ameritech bozo who installed my line "buried" it so poorly that it got hit by a lawn mower. The resulting splices in the line keep me down to about 33.6 most days, slower if it rains, but it always gets me to my mail, at least.

just cancelled DSL, have yet to sell grandma

[dR.fuZZo]

I was using Qwest as my DSL provider and my ISP. Well...they were just doing that little deal where their ISP customers were being switched over to MSN. So I wasn't that crazy about that. I considered finding a different ISP and keeping the DSL, but I didn't for two reasons.

1. Thought it would be good to spend a bit more time offline.

2. Qwest's service sucked.

To give you an example of 2, here's how it went when I called Qwest to cancel my service.

First person: Wants to go over all my personal info to make sure it's up to date. We do so. He says he'll transfer me to the folks who can cancel my DSL.

Second person: I get a paragraph of Spanish before I can make it clear that speaking in English works much better for me... Turns out the first guy transferred me to the wrong person. This is the Spanish Repair line. I get transferred.

Third person: Says she cancelled my ISP service, but not my DSL service. Says she'll transfer me to appropriate dept, but she disconnects me instead.

Fourth person: I call back. I can barely understand this person through her Ebonics. She transfers me without telling me that's what she's doing.

Fifth person: He tells me that it doesn't make sense that the third person cancelled my ISP service. He's supposed to do that. He finally (I think) takes care of everything.

The thing is, this wasn't too bad considering how some of my other calls have gone. Anyway, now I'm on a dirt cheap intro sale for dial-up with a company that's actually local. As opposed to doing anything with my Qwest account, I actually did all the sign-up stuff online.