Dump Broadband, Dig Out Your Modem! 566
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...'"
So be a friendly webmaster...install mod_gzip (Score:5, Informative)
Extremely satisfied broadband customer (Score:3, Informative)
reliable? (Score:3, Informative)
Never had a problem with broadband (Score:3, Informative)
I first got a cable modem about two years ago via RCN. Recently I moved to a new place which is not wired for RCN, so I switched to SBC (Ameritech) DSL. Surprisingly I really have had no major problems with the speed or reliability of their services (though I do take issue with the price).
I did have problems getting DSL service from a few providers, the standard DSL Hell - but they are both now in bakruptcy proceedings or already bankrupt - so go figure.
To go back to a regular modem is just unthinkable for me. Maybe my experience is atypical because I live in a large and competitive urban broadband market.
-josh
It'd be nice to have broadband to dump! (Score:2, Informative)
This is an American Thang (Score:2, Informative)
Price is $40CD/mo. , which is $30US.
Perhaps (and as a linux zealot I say this reluctantly) there's a place for limited (and legally enforced) monopolies in *some* markets (just not the OS market no thank you bob
One problem with service (Score:2, Informative)
When it was installed, the dude who set up my computer was a complete moron. I have AT&T Cable, BTW. Of course, they wouldn't allow me to do it myself, so this dude takes my case apart, and boots up my computer. Before I can say anything he puts the PCI NIC in while the machine is on. HE said "They saw you shouldn't do this, but its okay." Then he was surprised when Windows did not auto-detect it.
Not quite... (Score:3, Informative)
56k ISP: $13/mo
2nd Phone line: 0
Download time/Mb: ~6 minutes
Time to connect: ~10 seconds (wvdial is great)
Busy signals: Never.
ISP downtime/problems: 0
Plus, my ISP (hevanet.com), whom we've been with for over 7 years, runs BSD, so they provide a shell-login, and have always been Unix-friendly. From what I read here on Slashdot, lots of the broadband companies seem to go out of their way to make life difficult for non-MS users.
Actually, your response is crap (Score:2, Informative)
Wrong. I currently use Juno (cost $0) on my normal phone line (cost $0). Up until August I had a DSL connection (cost $45). That is a $45 difference. How many people do you really know that have a phoneline that they exclusively use for the internet? That is a marketing literature fabrication designed to make a broadband appear cheaper.
You are missing the entire point of the article. People are cancelling their broadband connections because the whiz-bang! effect has worn off. The average consumer has no need for large bandwidth because he gets bored with it.
When I had DSL, I downloaded about 50-60 CD's off of napster. Then I ran out of music that I wanted to download. I don't play video games, but even if I did, I would probably use a playstation. I had no more use for my internet connection other than checking my e-mail.
The fact is, broadband access at home is currently little more than a toy. And toys get tiresome. If I need to do research or use the internet for some other reason, I can use my T1 at work. Besides, I sit in front of a computer for 8 hours day. The last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer.
VPN: The Killer App (Score:5, Informative)
I'll never go back to dialup. Ever.
Why?
Simple, both my wife and I use it to connect to each of our corporate intra-nets using VPN. And if you want to do any real work, NFS mounts, Windows junk, remote compiling - anything - you really have to have enough speed to make it worthwhile.
It's not different for non-technical people either. If you use accounting programs, inventory tracking, anything else using a client-server model, broadband speeds are the only way to go for any real work at home.
ISP quality is more important than speed... (Score:1, Informative)
You'd never know my AOL was broadband unless you were downloading a big file. So that's what I use it for. The rest of the time, I surf from my dialup account.
I used to have Pacbell DSL at my old place. It was great most of the time- for me. The line itself never went down, and gave me a solid 12-1300K. My connection was only dropped a few times over the course of a year, and probably only because the modem got hot and lost sync. Pacbell had pretty good web service, pretty good non-binary news service (I don't really care about binary newsgroups). However, their mail service was so slow and unreliable, it was unusable. I didn't care because I have other mail accounts, but the average user would be really screwed on this one.
Still, the difference between Earthlink and Pacbell ISPs is night and day. I have a couple of friends with Earthlink DSL, which is over Pacbell's lines. Their service absolutely blows away what I was getting with Pacbell.
I live in Los Angeles. Earhlink DSL is great here, Pacbell DSL is OK, and from what I hear, cable service is great too. Major cities have dozens of huge internet backbones running through them. ISPs have many competitors, all scrapping to provide the best service, in order to win the biggest share of the millions of potential customers.
But it's not like that everywhere. I have family in Blacksburg, VA, home of Virginia Tech, and much-hyped Blacksburg Electronic Village. Part of the town is wired for ethernet, in some other areas you can get DSL, and the cable company provides high speed service. Unfortunatly, the backbone through the area is so weak, that no matter how fast your connection is, everything frequently slows to a crawl. The cable service is so bad at certain times of day, every day, that it's practically unusable. If you log on at 3am, you might get 3Mbit, but at 3pm, you're lucky to be able to read your email. The system is overloaded with tens of thousands of VTech students trading MP3s and whatnot, and the company who provides the service simply doesn't give a shit. Where else can people go? DSL service is exremely limited and expensive, so there's no competition. The neato Bevnet ethernet service is limited to a few parts of town- some student apartment buildings, and some offices. OTOH, you can rent an office with T1-like ethernet for less than what the line alone would cost in California.
Pity the folks in Myrtle Beach, SC, which is probably the fastest growing city in the country, including Las Vegas. Most of them can't get broadband at all. Cable is "coming." Phone companies have said outright that they're not even interested in providing DSL. Unfortunately, the phone lines suck too. Even when the cable companies finally get things going, it's likely they'll skimp at the ISP end, the local loops and servers will be really overloaded, and service will suck. On top of that, the backbones into the area probably suck anyway, like they do in the rest of the Southeast.
Getting back to my point, broadband isn't always worth the money. There are many other aspects to it than just a fast connection from you to your ISP, and these things are lacking as often as not. Buyer beware.
You can only imagine the stuff the europeans have. (Score:2, Informative)
In Sweden they have 10Mb for around $20.
Belgium is loaded with excellent broadband service for cable and dsl. Germany has dsl. They are also getting the Powerline super high speed internet connection going in Germany and Scandinavia. There prices are cheaper for high speed internet than the U.S. I pay $40 for 8Mb,640k ADSL in Korea. While I still pay $40 1Mb,128k in the U.S. We need to get competition in our broadband in the U.S. They are too monopolistic in their prices. One hikes their price and the rest follow suit. My ISP sent me an email saying they were do to the others were. We may I hate to say need government regulation back in some things. I rather they work it out before the government needs to intervene. I only had one problem with my DSL where it was out for 16hours the rest it has been up the whole time.
Re:Why I never bothered with broadband (Score:2, Informative)
bzztt..
Sorry. Wrong. Try again later.
What in God's name makes you think that a modem connection doesn't need a firewall?
It's still tcp/ip...
t_t_b
Broadband is cheap in Sweden (Score:2, Informative)
I always love to tell people what I pay for my internet lines
Why do I got two lines? I use alot of bandwidth, have many computers.
Bonet ADSL: 2.5 Mbit down, 760 Kbit up, real static IP.
250 SEK/$20 per month
Telia ADSL: 512 Kbit down, 700 Kbit, DHCP (almost static, never changes)
325 SEK/$33 per month
Yes, they have MORE upstream than downstream. The worlds only ISP that
have that? U got a 50% chance to get 700 Kbit in upstream instead of
512 kbit if u get Telia ADSL.
All ports are open, servers allowed (but not commercial servers).
Other ISPs in Sweden:
Chello: 512 Kbit/128 Kbit: $25 per month
Bredbandsbolaget (translation: Broadband company):
10 Mbit (old installs): $20 per month
100 Mbit (new installs): $20 per month
(no, im not kidding! Ethernet rules!)
Telenordia: 512 Kbit/128 Kbit: $33 per month
Misc other ISPs: $20-$35 per month
a reply from someone without broadband (Score:2, Informative)
broadband connection sucks for DNS res. or what
ever else. I have to tell you that you are nuts.
This is coming from someone that hasn't had the
experience of broadband, except for the 2.5 RL
friends I actually have that have it
friends that have it also complain about down time
and whatever else. But are you people not doing
the math here??? Lets see.... most of the people
I know with cable get average of 30kb sec. I get
at most 5... and they are down maybe for average
of 4 hours or so a week.... even though they are
down that much, they still get more online than I
just because of the speed difference. I just
can't understand why we just can't be happy...
instead of going wow look at the tech involved or
whatever else, you get angry because it takes a
whole
I could only afford to pay for crappy broadband.
L8r