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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.
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No, not quick enough.....is this why people get DSL?
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.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Wireless seems to be getting better and better all the time. Now that the hardware and software actually work well, this little ISP (that I work for) is actually able to provide a decent service without having to go throught he monopolistic phone company or the incompetent cable co...
For those of you who noticed that the submitter is dyslexic, the article is really about LSD, not DSL.
And of course LSD is beating out Cable. There's just no comparison in the forms of wholesome entertainment.
"Many legislators believe faster Web access can make people more productive at their jobs and help increase the gross domestic product . . ."
Unfortunately, I think that they don't take into account what a small proportion of those people would religiously read slashdot.
Thats funny.... Steve wrote to us with an article about the rise of DSL throughout the world. Is this why they I am losing my Directv Dsl so others can use it throughtout the world??
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I hate to say it, but i had DSL installed 2 months ago and had continual headaches with it.... between loosing connectivity due to crappy PPOE software, inability to host web services on the line for the same reason, pain in the ass phone filters all over my house and other various odities i became frustrated.
Now add to that the fact that Cable is Faster and works invisibly to my machine (DHCP) gives me an accesable IP and has no additional hardware (phone filters) yada yada yada.... Why WOULD i want DSL...
i opted out of DSL for cable within a month an have never been happier
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
That's nice, but for those of us still in the boonies (I connect at 24kbps on my 56 modem, due to phone line quality) who will never see cable or DSL, what kind of alternatives are there? Wireless is a no-go (no LOS to a good point for a central AP), satellite sucks for gaming (which is my killer app for bandwidth), so I guess I have to wait for my neighbors to realize that they too need a fast connection - then we can form a Network Neighborhood with a leased line and wireless with coffee can antennas.
"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.
Many areas of the US can't get DSL service due to their distance from the phone company central office. So they are left with no choice but to get cable, if it's availible.
I fell into this category, as even though DSL was availible in my town (a suburb outside of NYC), I was wayyyy too far from the central office to get DSL. Only just recently did my local cable supplier begin offering broadband.
In smaller countries with more concentrated populations, more people live within the appropriate distance from the central office. Hence the larger amount of people with DSL service.
That there are two main factors in this.
The first is that the US is large and other countries, for the most part, are small. Geographically speaking that is. I understand the DSL has a limited range and that you must be within X miles of certaint equipment in order for it to work. Cable modems don't have this limitation.
The other reason is that in america a great deal of the telephone wire (which DSL runs on) is complete crap. I went to Israel a couple years ago. The pay phones are so cool, they don't take change, only cards, and they have lcd screens. Not only that, but I was in this guys house, and I thought I saw a cat5 plug in the wall, but I was wrong. It was the telephone. Their telephone infrastructure is 1000 times more modern than ours.
That's the big problem with america. Our country is so large that in a time of rapid technological change we can't change our infrastructure fast enough to keep up with the rest of the world. It's feasable for say japan to cover its entire country in an amazing wireless network. Not so for the US. Cable modems require no new infrastructure. They just require people who already have cables coming into their house to get another wire run inside. DSL requires the phone company to update its stuff and put up new equipment.
From my experience though, DSL is cheaper, faster, and more reliable. And if your provider doesn't suck, they don't limit your bandwith.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Most of the places around the world don't have cable like we do (large and going pass most homes), and they also have teleco companies with huge national power. SO while DSL is winning, it isnt' because it's the better choice, it's winning more by default and by the control of the marketplace by Teleco companies.
http://www.hawknest.com/
With Cable I experienced a reliable weather-independent service.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
in the United States cable is winning, but globally, DSL holds the cake.
I'm still giggling over this, and I have no idea why it's so funny. "Holds the cake?" Where did THAT expression come from? I suppose if the shoe were on the other hand, I'd have just turned the other chin, 'cause I hate to kick a man while he's spitting into the wind. But a closed mouth gathers no foot, so I'll say my two scents' worth and walk off into the sunspot.
Considering MY DSL provider just tanked.
;-)
Thanks Slashdot, for making the holidays truly happy.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Cable was too restrictive. Sure, the speed is better in my neck of the woods, but choice matters more to me.
With DSL, in Portland, OR at least, I get to choose from a number of different speeds and ISP's.
For me this is the difference between a *real* connection to the Internet, and a download only one.
(Shameless plug --If you do not live here, skip!)
www.spiretech.com
- Shell account on server via SSH or (gasp!) telnet.
- Some level of free web site hosting.
- Good connectivity
- Only real user restriction is that you do not abuse the connection. So running a commercial site is out, but all the hobby level stuff is ok.
- IP address by username in dns. Not static, but very useful. eg: user_name@dsl.spiretech.com
These things matter a lot to me. I use my home connection for many different activities. Many are related to my job, but some are just for learning.
So, you basically trade choice and connectivity for speed. For me that's fine. Maybe others see the same?
Blogging because I can...
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).
Support bacteria! It's the only culture most people seem to get.
I believe that more people in the US use cable rather than DSL due to the distance limitations of DSL. Since the population of America is so widely dispersed over a vast land, I think that cable becomes more practical. However, in places like Western Europe and Asia, DSL becomes more practical due to a very dense population. Nevertheless, I think DSL will hit it off big in the major cities and metropolitan areas of America. Cable will make it in more rural areas.
high-speed Web surfing done via cable modems, which in general costs about $10 less a month in the United States than DSL service does.
So... any idea why cable's more popular in the US?
Seriously though, DSL is expensive. When my sister ot her apartment, there was no way to get cable access and DSL was, IIRC, $70-80 a month. Much too much for a grad student to pay, unless you'd absolutely die without it.
The DSL companies may be very popular, as is cable, but if they don't drop their prices to more afordable levels, they'll lose out on customers. More importantly, we won't beadvancing the world of tech as quickly. In a few years, if it's not already, it's going to be damn near impossible to do much with a dial-up connection. Web sites are getting larger and more complicated, and more people will need wider pipes.
Anyway, back to work.
I may be totally wrong about this, but can't cable modems use existing cable lines, where DSL needs either fiber or at least better than two-wire phone line? So it makes sense that since the USA has a fairly large existing cable infrastructure that the growth might be faster in that area.
In the case of my area (Salem, Oregon, an hour south of Portland), cable was much more readily available to a larger subscriber area than DSL was, at least at the time we first subscribed. Plus DSL was more expensive at that time as well.
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...
My DSL has DHCP, an accessible IP, has a small cable I plug into the phone socket which isn't exactly much.
Oh and Cable isn't in my area. In most of Europe Satellite TV rules the roost, except for major cities and even there Sat tends to have an edge. Europe didn't spend the 50s,60s and 70s installing a cable TV network, it went straight from terrestrial to Satellite. This means that the only network that is EVERYWHERE is the Phone network hence DSL.
So you'd want DSL if you were in a place where the investment in the Phone infrastructure has been going for the 40 years that cable investment has been going in the US.
This is why no-one is suprised (except the Slashdot editor) that Cable is big in the US and DSL big everywhere else. Its sort of like saying "Hey look CDMA is big in the US but GSM is big everywhere else".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
is because the U.S is NOT densly populated. For example, Europe is extremely dense in population thus make DSL an easy choice with many people close to the relay stations (within 3 miles). Where as in the U.S. you have mountains, deserts, artic tundra where lower population live so they must use cable.
Also, much of Europe and Asia use satelite for television so people don't have the option to use the exist co-ax that is running into their homes as almost all have in the U.S (for Internet access).
This all goes back to why Europe and Asia are ahead of the U.S in mobile phones. To cover the population of lets say Japan, with relay towers is relatively simple because of the dense population. Thus making new technology easily upgradable (for relay towers) because they don't need as many and they are not spread over long distances.
is a no brainer. The telco's in the US are primarily concerned with keeping their monopoly at all costs. This isn't too surprising, considering that all of them were in the not-too-distant past just one company that was forced to break up. Unfortunately, by breaking them into regional monopolies, nothing was accomplished (Which is also why I, and several other insightful posters, were against breaking MS into an OS company, and an applications company.), because while they no longer had an iron grip on the whole nation, the smaller companies has iron grips on blocks of states, with no danger of competition from neighboring baby bells. True, the long distance market really took off, but the local/regional pie is still nothing but SBC, NYNEX, Bell South, and the rest. These smaller companies are the ones responsible for DSL's terrible acceptance in the US. A quick check while writing this post on dslreports.com shows that I can get 608/128 for $42 a month. I've hit speeds of 2000/128 with my cable modem, for $40 a month. Cable is faster, cheaper, AND IT WORKS. Yet with DSL, the happy people are happy, and the rest have nothing but horror stories of telcos missing appointments, not bringing the right equipment, damaging existing wiriring, and generally making it a royal pain. Sure, there's "competition" in the DSL market (again, the baby bells versus Covad, et al), but with prices being less attractive, and the installation/support headaches, it's not worth it unless you have a cable provider that spies on you (comcast) or blocks practically all useful services (cox).
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
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.
What is music when you despise all sound?
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.
Two main reasons
1) Network topology. Cable is a ring, so all the consumers are sharing the bandwidth, the local connection forms the bottle neck. xDSL is star, each customer has exclusive use until the backbone. It suffers less contention. This benefits the consumer.
2) Cost. Cable expensive to install, you need to install a new cable ring and new run to each subscriber. XDSL operate of the existing twisted copper pair of the local loop. This benefits the ISP.
AIH, We are rolling out a broadband Interactive DTV using IP over ADSL because of these advantage.
One thing that I like about DSL over cable (having used both in my area) is that the latency of the DSL is better. I think most people are probably more latency sensitive than bandwidth sensitive. When you are clicking links, you want that instant feedback.
.. from cable to DSL. The only thing thats keeping me? The contract.
With cable, I can drop them any time I feel like it. With DSL, I have to sign at least a 1 year contract. Then there's the issue of the bandwidth caps.
I'd gladly give up any instance of having TWC at the house. I could get DSL for easily $15 cheaper/month but won't for these two reasons.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
You have some points wrong:
"is because the U.S is NOT densly populated. For example, Europe is extremely dense in population thus make DSL an easy choice with many people close to the relay stations (within 3 miles). Where as in the U.S. you have mountains, deserts, artic tundra where lower population live so they must use cable."
Population density in Finland is lower than in US, still ADSL is pretty popular here. I believe that majority of population in US lives in cities (>100000) cities, thus mountains, deserts and artic tundra won't make big difference.
"Also, much of Europe and Asia use satelite for television so people don't have the option to use the exist co-ax that is running into their homes as almost all have in the U.S (for Internet access)."
At least in Finland this isn't true, Internet connection via cable modem is available in all major cities.
Reason for ADSL success is it's stability:
With cable modem you will get fluctuating 50-500ms ping in Online games with 10-60% packet loss. This is totally unplayble.
With ADSL you will get stable 90% of Finland's land area (and >95% of population) was covered by GSM network by 1998. As I pointed earlier Finland has lower population density compared to US.
Too bad capitalism is keeping the broadband market f**ed up.
Capitalism? Capitalism only works if companies have to compete for customers.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I first went from a dial up to cable - which needless to say was a welcomed improvement. However, I soon found the downside of my cable service from Charter Communications, or actually a third-party company called High Speed Access (AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!). The problems not only came from total lack of customer support, but stupidly designed networks. My whole town was on a single network node! So you could tell when the kiddies came home from school - you'd loose all connectivity as all the packets started colliding.
Making matters worse, I'd frequently wait on hold for 40 minutes to argue with HSA's 'support' desk. I'd tell them there was a problem, they'd tell me they didn't have any record of the problem, etc, etc. Funny, when I pay $50 / month for a service I can't use, I fail to see why I should continue paying. They were down every other weekend!
Charter was very good about the issue, but unfortunatly, HSA was impossible to work with. In the end, I dropped the Cable modem - and HSA kept charging me. I finally had to forward my many deliquency notices to Charter, who dealt with HSA's substandard billing department. I believe I am finally off the hook for this service that did not provide the high speed access (or even 'access') they claimed.
After dumping cable, I got DSL from my phone company (Frontier) and have had the best of luck. Maybe once every 3-4 months, the service is out. But when I call, there is usually a message explaing the outage, and giving an estimate of when it will be back. No more waiting 40 minutes on hold for an argument! What's more, I have never seen any of these downtimes last more than an hour, where with HSA's cable service, it would last entire weekends!
But best of all DSL provides a ROUTER - I'm on my own node. The only packets going out of that router are the ones intended to go out of the router. Cable modems toss packets indesciminately (unless you have a firewall infront of it).
A Friend of mine has Time-Warner cable, and does not have the problems I had with HSA. I believe this is because they came in later in the game, and learned from the mistakes of the other cable providers. But from my experience, most cable networks are poorly implemented, and extremely insecure. Not worth the money, from my experience.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits
Another thing worth taking a look at is the legalities behind both systems in the US. While cable companies are selling broadband internet service with little to no regulation, phone companies must abide by numerous policies set for them in years past. This leads to unfair competition and an unfair advantage for the cable companies. It helps explain the reason why cable is winning! The Breaux-Nickles bill in congress was attempting to even up the regulations.
Top five for those who are too lazy to click:
(country, DSL-lines in 1000, lines per 100 population)
- South-Korea, 6076, 12.7
- USA, 5837, 2.0
- Japan, 4223, 3.3
- Germany, 2800, 3.4
- China, 2220, 0.2
Numbers are supposely from september, but I know that Germany is at >3000000 lines right now, so maybe they're not too accurate (or Germany's market is growing real fast...Look out for China, it'll lead this ranking soon, just because of being HUGE.
Lots of people are pointing out the issue of population densities which are in inhibition on the ability of DSL to penetrate the market.
.... Now if only we could figure out a way to do away with those unsightly power lines to boot.
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.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
What's the problem? The product is available and more people sign up every year. Wait a few years, and everybody with disposable income who wants a fast Internet connection will have one.
What the telcos are really whining about is competition. They want the third-party providers, like Covad, to go away, so they can have a protected monopoly with unregulated prices.
As a college student, I have lived in numerous places and have had first-hand experience with 3 different cable connections (Adelphia, Cox, and Comcast), and 4 different DSL providers (Covad, Sprint FastConnect, Verizon, and my current provider - Cavalier Telephone). In every single case, DSL has been the most reliable and consistent connection for me. First of all, I do not understand how the $10 cheaper price for cable makes any sense. Cable is actually $5-$10 more expensive for people who aren't already cable subscribers. For us people with DirecTV - paying the cable companies is something we find insulting. Second - uptime. Cable service in my area (northern virginia) has a tendency to go out more often than the electricity. Thunderstorms are a 99% guarantee of downtime with cable modem service for us. Even if there is a network outage, I almost never see a DSL sync drop out, even during heavy storms. Third - bandwidth consistency. Adelphia offered me 3Mbps. Guess what, I was lucky to get 512Mbps even on a Sunday afternoon. I would honestly take a 768kbps DSL connection over a 1.5Mbps cable connection that wasn't consistent. Of course, all of these are related to my personal experience, and I cannot speak for anyone else. I'm sure there are plenty of people with crappy DSL service and excellent cable providers. However, that has not been the case in the DC area for myself. And the PPPoE argument is pointless. Get yourself a Linksys router and you won't know the difference anyways.
Install ONE filter at your external connection point, on your second line.
All your outlets should be wired to your second line.
Your DSL modem is connected to your primary line.
(or vice versa).
At least that's how I did it.
Then get a Linksys router and don't use the PPPOE software.
Do those things, and DSL is better than cable, AND most DSL companies aren't nearly as restrictive as far as ports and quotas and such. AND you're not sharing your connection with every other joker in your neighborhood, (and they're not sniffing your line, or hacking into your system).
All in all, DSL is way better than cable in every way.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
.
I don't buy all these "we're too thinly populated" excuses from America. Canada isn't any more heavily industrialized than America, and yet our DSL providers are *way* ahead of yours.
I think the heart of it is something in the culture and management of the respective telco industries in each country. Canadian telco's embraced DSL as their future, and worked hard to have the infrastructure in place. In Canada ILEC's are forced to share their back ends with third party DSL providers, and so far they haven't resorted to dirty tricks.
In the US, it sounds like they're dragging their feet, and crying loudly about not wanting to share their lines. Not only that, but it sounds like a lot of your copper is pretty crappy (rain taking out DSL service??, never heard of it up here), and your CO's spread thinly - I'm guessing that it's a result of "cheapest at all costs" operating methods.
There are 48, yes forty-eight, different DSL providers in Toronto. I've got 3500 kbps DL and 800 kbps UL for $70 CDN per month, available to over 30% of Canada's population, growing all the time. More than half of Canada has access to 1200/160 DSL service. And my Mom will have access to DSL in RURAL SASKATCHEWAN (one town of 1000 people every 20 miles) in two years.
You need to quit making excuses, and start screaming at your corporate and governmental "masters" for better results.
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>Ah, but as pointed out here before by others[...]
Now, it gets interesting. In what context has this been pointed out? Mobile phones, which are another form of wireless access.
> This means that it is much easier and cheaper to reach a higher percentage of the population with fewer fiber runs.
The costs of fibre lies not in the length of the fibre, which cost next to nothing compared to the rest of the hardware or the costs to lay the cables, especially in countries, where they have to be run underground (Germany comes to mind).
But, AFAIK, most industrial countries have already fibre-to-the-hub, and some have partially fibre-to-the-curb. This is necessary for telcos providing DSLs, in order to carry the bandwidth without having to run several hundreds lines of copper.
How does the lesser population density affect the (assumed) bandwidth barrier of wireless access and the (assumed) constant increase of bandwidth need?
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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
I don't know if you really grok the difference in scale between the US and Finland. 90% of Finland's land mass (337,113 km^2) is equivalent to 3.2% of the US's land mass (9,363,130km^2).
So the USA has 30 times as much land to cover, but it also has 50 times the population (and 70 times the GNP) of Finland to pay for coverage. Population density is the only worth while measurement here.
Incidentally, we have fairly decent GSM coverage in the Southeastern US, as long as we're relatively close to an interstate highway.
I don't think many Americans understand what good coverage is. I've trecked through the tundra for days and found myself in places where the only manmade structure visible for miles is a cell tower on nearby mountain giving perfect coverage. Close to an interstate highway? I'm talking places with no roads.
Of course, this is not all good, since the Nordic governments have, for political reasons, made coverage of rural areas a condition for receiving GSM licenses, meaning that it is us city dwellers who are paying for all the underused towers...