I agree, that for the most part, cable companies have not figured out that 2-way communications means consistent availability. AT&T has been known to forget that (The great Lilly Tomlin operator skits were based more on perceived reality from many peoples experience than fiction.) from time to time.
To bad that where I live, dialup modems are still limited to 28.8, there is no DSL available, and no cable. The satellite I tried (wild blue) had such propagation delay (think 2,500 millisecond ping times - our satellite was routed via a downlink station in upstate NewYork, then routed on AT&T lines to Colorado where WildBlue was based - so far 14 router hops, before being dropped onto the open internet in mid-state Colorado somewhere - FTP speed was OK, but half the time I couldn't do interactive banking with my local bank). Currently we get about the same speed using Sprint Wireless, but the latency makes it reasonable. It is still only half the speed needed to make hulu.com work for me. Who know, one day I may be able to get 20th century data speeds before the 21st century is up or I die. -- Sorry for the whining. Over time, the phone company has learned that making service appear consistent is a better business model for them than making it as good as it can get everywhere. So I don't expect much if any more 'good mediocrity' from them. Cable companies seem to still think that 90+% uptime is reasonable, and it may be for broadcast communications, but bi-directional communications, you will get folks to complain when you get less than 5-9's reliability (I think that is about 56 seconds per year of unscheduled downtime to put it in perspective). As bad as Lilly made the phone company sound, it is still a better game than cable for interactive service, IMHO. Daniel Owen wrote: > I would say it depends. I left Comcast and moved to AT&T ADSL about a > year ago and have been very happy. I left because Comcast service in > my neighborhood had gotten to a point where I was loosing service > every 3-4 weeks. The final kick for me was when I called to report an > outage and the automated system told me that they had too many calls > and instead of giving me an option to wait on hold just hung up. So > far I have not experiences AT&T's support after one little install > issue and that is really what I want. the one support call was quick > and courteous. I personally believe phone companies do a better job of > keeping service up and working than the cable companies do. > > Having said that if you are not having trouble with Comcast it may be > better to just stick with Comcast if you can get them to reduce your > rates. After all there is no guarantee that you won't bee one of the > lucky DSL customers that has problems every time it rains or has some > other type of odd behavior from time to time. I've been lucky but not > everyone is. > > As for speed I have 6meg and for anything but large downloads I really > can't tell the difference between DSL and Cable. If you live in a > particularly active neighborhood the bandwidth bottleneck being at the > CO instead of your local neighborhood (the old cable is a shared pipe > argument) can at least in theory make DSL faster during peek times. > > When I first got DSL I had issues with streaming content being choppy > and I called support. They had to send a line tech to do something or > other and since then it has been great. If I remember correctly line > noise was causing a lot of lost/corrupt packets but I could be wrong. > A year has passed and much like when I talk to my users I assume the > AT&T techs try to simplify things for me the idiot end user. > > > On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 3:20 PM, xor <johnw...@gmail.com > <mailto:johnw...@gmail.com>> wrote: > > > I currently have Comcast cable as an internet provider, and have had > Comcast for the better part of 10 years. > > Currently AT&T is offering a $125 rebate to anyone who switches to one > of their DSL packages. In addition they are offering $100 to > subscribe to their DSL Ultra package or better. > > I currently have landline service with AT&T, so I qualify for the > rebates. > > DSL Ultra is 1.5 Mbs up and 256 down. ($33/mo) > DSL Extreme is 3 Mbs up and 384 down. ($38/mo) > DSL Extreme 6 is 6 Mbs up and 512 Kbps down. ($43/mo) > > I'm thinking the middle DSL Extreme would be sufficient. > > With $225 in rebates, would it be worth the switch to DSL, or should I > just keep Comcast & be happy with it. Each month the $43 bill from > Comcast comes in & it seems a bit steep. > > Also, I've heard that Comcast will drop your rate for a few months if > you call them & want to drop their service. Is that true? > > > > > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
