DSL Rising

Steve wrote to us with an article about the rise of DSL throughout the world. What I find most interesting is the discussion about cable vs. DSL; in the United States cable is winning, but globally, DSL holds the cake.

Comments

DSL and Cable are great...

[Randolpho]

But they're national network only solutions. Local ISPs have no real broadband alternative available to them yet.

Hopefully 802.11(x) will allow the little guys to compete.

Laws to help DSL penetration?

[MasterOfMagic]

"If you show a politician some of these numbers, this should get them into action," Rodey said.

In other words, what Mr. Rodney is trying to say is that the United States needs laws to help DSL penetration and to give DSL providers a competitive advantage in the United States. Excuse me Mr. Rodeny, isn't it your department to become competitive?

I have DSL through BellSouth, and I had to call them today because they billed me incorrectly. Two weeks ago I had to call them because I wasn't getting synch. A week before that I had to call them because something else wasn't working. (It's turned out that a BBG is down.) Yet this entire time my friend with cable didn't have to call his provider, got better speeds, and doesn't have to pay a mint to the phone company.

What am I missing? Do DSL companies not want customers? Can they not do regular network maintanence or bill correctly? It seems that cable internet providers can do all this and cheaper. Kind makes me want to switch to cable.

One major DSL problem

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

In my experience telephone lines in the Bay Area are not really suitable for reliable DSL service. A bit of weather (like last night, but not also on much milder days too) and signal quality degrades. For voice it just produces crackling on the line but it kills DSL. If I speak to Pac-Bell (or whatever name my local phone monopoly has this week) the response is simply "it's raining, that's normal". DSL runs over ordinary telephone lines which were not designed to carry high bandwidth data.

With Cable I experienced a reliable weather-independent service.

I've Used Both

[TTMuskrat]

I've used both cable modems and DSL and I have to say that I prefer DSL. I had constant mini-outages with the cable modem - ICQ up, ICQ down, ICQ back up, ICQ back down - coupled with several major network issues that kept me disconnected for long periods of time (upwards of 10-13 hours). Of course, this may be only a fault of Time Warner's service. I've yet to have any connectivity problems with my DSL.

Also, I've not noticed that "...cable modems, which in general costs about $10 less a month in the United States than DSL service does." Both my cable and my dsl cost $49.99 a month - though I did get a special on my DSL ($25 for the first 6 mo).

speed + popularity...

[curtis]

When I first got a cable modem, I was blown away by the speed, often in excess of 350k/sec but after a couple of years and the popularity of the internet and broadband the speed has dropped significantly as my neighbors have all jumped on the shared bandwidth. I think my average speed has dropped down to 120k/sec which isn't bad but there are times (often after work at night) when the speeds are much slower than that and there are signs that it may drop even lower than that...

Winning?

[sielwolf]

Ok... winning? Have we all of a sudden picked sides? I'm sorry, my friend, but I'm on the side of cheap, fast, unhindered broadband (i.e. the best product). There are no sides therefore there is no winning other than in the very individualistic sense.

Right now the cable BB is much better than DSL: the service is more consistent, it is faster, and price is comparable. Now what happens if everybody in my complex jumps on Roadrunner? Well then switiching over to DSL might be an opprotune move.

Actually the only people who I can say are winning are e-businesses. Wasn't one of the roots of the dot-bomb the lack of sufficient average internet speed? The faster, more persistent the connection is, the more likely consumers will browse which is important for that Impulse Buying thing.

"Ohhh! They released Hoop Dreams on DVD! Gotta pick that up!"*

*Note: the commie bastards still haven't released Hoop Dreams on DVD.

Re:cable IS better

[MeNeXT]

Now add to that the fact that Cable is Faster

This is like saying that a 5 lane highway is faster than a 3 lane highway. It's how many people or on that counts, and what speed limit is permited

I see no diff between the two.

Uptake slow because telco at capacity on DSL

[JeffL]

In my local area, the telco, Qwest, appears to be at capacity for providing DSL. Of the many people I have encouraged to get DSL, only those folks living in outlying cities have been able to successfully get it installed. People living here in Boulder, CO have repeatedly been told their line does not qualify, when people living in the same building already have DSL.

It always amazes me to read articles about the US lagging in DSL uptake, or the telcos not signing up as many people as they hoped, when in fact they are turning people away.

Maybe there is an explanation other than capacity, such as Qwest pulling a BT and refusing to signup people who don't request MSN as their ISP.

Re:Cable is Better in YOUR area

[Guppy06]

"Europe didn't spend the 50s,60s and 70s installing a cable TV network, it went straight from terrestrial to Satellite."

Which may very well be the reason why cable is "better" in the US.

Of course, Europe didn't really need to run much coax to begin with. They don't need anywhere near the same amount of UHF/VHF broadcasters to cover their entire country.

Good points but

[tmortn]

Lots of people are pointing out the issue of population densities which are in inhibition on the ability of DSL to penetrate the market.

However in the US there is also a real problem with the control the phone companies have over the telephone infrastructure. Not that they don't have a right to control of something they invested in but where the phone companies are not diving into DSL they are charging the DSL providers an arm and a leg to install and modify customer connections.. sometimes as much as 50-100 bucks simply to follow a customer through an address change.

Ultimately both cable companies and Phone companies have to integrate new technologies to add broadband net connection capabilities but for DSL providers there is the additional 'access' to the infrastructure charges that the cable providers are largely not having to deal with. To add insult to injury in most cases where the phone companies are attempting to provide DSL service themselves they are charging only a minimal amount less than non-phone company providers.. and generally tie those rates to using them for your phone service provider as well.

Population density is only part of the story... if you check census data you will find that the majority of the US population lives in fairly dense poplation areas.. DSL could easily have more users in the US if it were not for the issues presnted by the phone companies... as is cable companies have embraced broadband access much more readily and have thus secured a competitve edge.

In the long run I think both are doomed... the cost of a physically wired infrastructure is insane, creating, maintaining and updating. Countries on the scale of the US face and even larger problem in trying to maintain and update its many sparsely populated areas. On the other hand Wireless technologies are rapidly maturing to the point of being able to replace a wired infrastructure. In fact in many countries cellular services have all but replaced land line phone services. The same will happen in the US and in the rest of the world I imagine. .... Now if only we could figure out a way to do away with those unsightly power lines to boot.

Re:cable vs dsl

[z4ce]

Your friends should try intstalling some fair queuing in their kernel.

Assuming you have an ethernet adsl modem, when you are uploading you'll fill the sendQ on your modem. When you want send TCP acks for your downloads, it has to wait through that whole queue. If you use something like a bucket filter (I think that's what it's called), you should be able to limit the the outgoing speed on your ethernet card, thus not filling the sendQ, and improving the interactivity.

Ian