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...'"

cause she is broke

[Anonymous Coward]

She did it cause she is broke so what. If I had no job and had to cut back that is one place I would look at too

I'll never use a modem again.

[CrazyJoel]

I could tolerate the net at 56k. Plus, the phone lines in my area are so noisy that you'd hardly ever get 4800 baud on them.

Misleading introduction

[Stalemate]

If was using DSL mostly to commute and I left my job and had less cash laying around, I'd probably cancel the DSL too.

Wow. I don't think I could ever go back.

[yndrd]

I've grown so accustomed to highspeed access that broadband is almost a "necessity" for me; I'd consider cutting the stream of crap on cable television before I'd dump my cable modem.

That said, I can imagine that for many users, high speed access is a frivolity. Let's face it: you need a high speed connection mainly for gaming, porn, and overwrought sites with lots of graphics.

You could probably get by with a regular modem (and, hell, a text browser), if you actually wanted the Internet just for information.

This isn't a techological problem though....

[Anonymous Coward]

it is a problem of providers cutting corners.

Quebec, Canada as an Example

[KosovoYankee]

Look, if you want broadband to work, you need a company focussed on their customers, with a manageable customer base and no plans for massive expansion. Videotron, in Quebec, Canada, provides reliable, inexpensive cable internet to one province, and one province only, with a possible market of around 5 milions people. They have kept their operation small, their staff trained, and decided not to expand into other provinces. In this way, they are able to maintain a high level of service. Your mileage may vary, but I have only had 2 down days of service, living in 2 large metropolitan regions of Quebec, in 2 years.

This is in direct contrast to Bell Canada, who's attempt service all of Canada has led to an incrdibly bad DSL service and Rogers cable modem service collapsing under the immense wieght of their customers.
The moral: Don't bite off more than you can chew. Canada may not be as competitive, but there are lessons to be learned from staying in business long enough to make money off the customers you already have.

Broadband situation is generally deplorable

[Ars-Fartsica]

Most people still can't get cable modem or DSL.

Those who can face unreliable service, high prices, and shamefully bad customer service and support.

And its getting worse. Most of the start-ups that may have created competition in this market have gone under, leaving the cable and telephone monopolies in charge.

I don't know if the solution is more or less regulation and/or public involvement, but in the current atmosphere, things are going to suck for a very long time.

Big suprise.

[Sj0]

The truth is, most people don't need that much bandwidth(which is irrelevant in many cases because of limits put on broadband in many areas), people don't care if their computer is connected 24/7, and a lot of people just use their computers for sending E-mail and chatting. Broadband is nice, but why would people stick with something expensive and elabourate when a cheap and easy solution exists? Broadband is great for people who use computers for games, or downloads, or even for developers, but when all you are doing is checking your E-mail and chatting, 56k is more than enough -- especially for half the cost.

It's called "ditch the monopoly"

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who has access to broadband is lucky, and if you have your choice between DSL and Cable, you are even luckier. But whatever your "choice," you are lucky, and the provider treats you that way -- its as if they are doing us this big favor, and we shouldn't complain because we have no other choice.

I ordered digital cable tv, phone, and internet from the same (nameless) provider. It took two weeks, even though all the cables and hookups were already installed in the house. When they showed up, they said, "whoops - your phone didn't get put in the DB, so I'll hook it up now and all you have to do is call to activate. They shouldn't have to come out here again." After 2 hours on the phone trying to convince them to just activate it, they said, "Sorry, we have to send out another technician, and that will take another week."

"Can't you just try activating it from there and see if that works?" I begged.

"No."

So another week without phone service went by. The technician came and, guess what, it was already all hooked up. All he had to do was call some special number to have it activated.

Then, when I got home that evening, I went to check my email and guess what? My broadband Internet connection was gone. I called tech support again (and waited in the easy-listening queue) only to be told (after reboots and wire reconnecting) that they'd have to send out another technician, and that they didn't have any spots open until TWO WEEKS LATER.

I wanted to tell them to shove their connection and cancel all my services. I wanted nothing more. But I don't dare do it -- I live in a "low" aread where cell phone service is bad, TV reception is bad, and DSL isn't offered, plus I bought my own cable modem.

They know I'm stuck with them, no matter how crappy their service / prices are. Short of disconnecting myself from the world and going back to 56k, I'm there.

This article is crap

[pod]

I read this article yesterday, and it was so painful. The very premise is bogus. You're paying about 2-3 times as much for a cable/dsl line as for dialup. While such a price may be a little hard to justify for people already on a very tight budget, chances are you can spare the dollar a day required to keep your line.

And the value in 'broadband' is not the speed really. We've heard many times now, it's the instant availability stupid. People hate to have to wait (through busy signals potentially) to get online witha modem to check their mail. They like to have ICQ/AIM running all the time to see when their friends are online and to chat. It's all about convinience.

Besides, the article is full of contradictions, for example take this bit:

[ISPs] are looking for high-speed subscriptions' profit margins to bolster their bottom line...

and later:

...operating margins excluding sales and marketing expenses for cable modem subscribers are as low as 5 percent, and they say DSL is break-even at best.

So which one is it? I work for an ISP that does DSL, and let me tell you, there are no margins on DSL. It can easily take a 2-3 years to start making money on a DSL client. Hosting (and dialup to a certain extent) and bandwidth reselling is where the margins are.

And as a later paragraph puts it, high-speed subscribers would "rather sell their grandmothers" than go back to a pokey dial-up connection. It'll be hard for anyone to convert back to a dialup connection.

Boycott Broadband

[sabinm]

This isn't surprising if you are not mission critical

Where I live, I waited for broadband for two years. During that two years, I've seen download caps, bandwidth restrictions, disallowing of multiple IP addresses as well as privacy intruding features of ISPs RIAA and the federal govt. People who actively seed back doors if you actually UTILIZE the bandwidth that you pay for. Plus the qos stinks. nothing out there is worth it. Sure you may be able to vid-conference, but with whom? Watch movies over the web? Not until the entertainment industry pulls out of their litigation. I only surf a total of about 10 websites. And I need broadband for this?

I always said that anyone is a fool to pay for dialup. not I extend that. Anyone is a fool to pay for internet service. Broadband is useless in any applicable sense these days, and dialup is not a premium. Maybe this whole lousy ISP dynamic will collapse and be replaced by community networks. That would be golden, and something that I would pay for. Instead of paying corporations to tell me how much and what I should download and what I should use my property for.

I see this happening... actually

[Neutron_F1uX]

Even out in a rural area in Minnesota, I've seen this happening for about the last month. Nothing major, but a customer here, a customer there, maybe 2 for a month, dropping High Speed to return to dialup.

Reasons I've heard so far 'too expensive', or 'expense did not justify the speed' and what not. Let's face it, this isn't cable. We've got DSL out here, and people are paying for it. NOt cheap, it's under the control of the local telco's, and if I were not an employee getting major discounts, I probably would not get DSL.

For the average home user, what advantages does DSL or other high speed alternatives give them? Faster downloads? Everyone likes that, but it's where most of the 'benefits' end. Most of the folks who have DSL out here don't know enough to understand how to save files into particular places, let alone how to watch streaming videos.

So what do the people who's kids talked them into getting DSL get, after their kid leaves? Not a lot, if they don't really know how to use their computer, or if all they do is browse CNN/stock sites, and do email. What's the point in paing that much more per month, just to do email? Not a lot, I'd say...

It does make sense. Until ISP's don't gauge prices, it won't matter. Sad thing is, we aren't even gauging prices. We're making a little money now, but we had to pay to have a lot more range then any city DSL company, with fewer subscribers.

56k would be enough...

[geekoid]

...if people would learn how to make a damn web site speedy.
I no longer view /. at home because there damn ad system stalls the whole load.
Not to mention the site that have 1/2 a meg or more index page, sheesh.
Anybody who designs a site for a wide range of consumer customers(as opposed to business cutomers) that doesn't design the index page as a basic, small page that allows the consumer to choose between a high band width page and a smaller low bandwidth page, should be fired and ceramoniously stripped of there editors. I had DSL for a year, then cable for a year, and I gaurantee you if I could get them for a reasonable price, I'd do it again.

original vision of the web

[gribbly]

if this really does turn out to be a major trend, a positive side effect would be a lot more consideration for low bandwidth users. Sites may return to being trimmer, more text-oriented. You know, like the original vision Tim Berners-Lee had for the web!

It's hardly an original point, but it's worth mentioning in the context of this story. Most of the useful information I get from the web is text.
E.g., slashdot, virtua fighter websites, drudgereport, etc.

The main exception to this is probably mapquest. The rest of my browsing is work research and/or entertainment. My point is that very often 90% of the data I download is extraneous images and other content (e.g., ads, decorations, other blah...) that I pay zero attention to. (BTW, I have T3 at work and DSL at home).

On a dial-up connection (and I used to use one, from *Australia*) this is really annoying. With broadband it's not so bad -- but what could be better than surfing a more text-based web with broadband? There wouldn't _be_ download time as such -- the amount of time it takes to d/l a pageful of text is trivial compared to the time it takes to find ther server, and (often) for the server to retrieve/generate the page.

So in some ways a mass defection back to modems would be a healthy thing for the web.

grib.

Missing the point of broadband apparently...

[Arethan]

I used to work in the Cable Modem industry, back when it was "New Technology(tm)". The biggest selling point that I noticed for the tech savvy was the speed. (Obviously.) However, the tech savvy market is smaller than you think. So the real highest selling point was the cost vs benefit. For example:

_Dialup Model_
56k ISP: $20+/mo
2nd Phone line: $20+/mo
waiting 10 minutes/MB: pain in the ass

_Cable Modem Model_
Modem Rental: $10/mo or less
Connection Fees: $30-$40/mo
waiting 30 seconds/MB: less pain in the ass

The point is, for the same price, or even $10 more, people could have the same non-voice-line-interrupting service, and even get some extra speed out of the deal. People that had the more expensive ISPs (AOL comes to mind) were even more prone to make the switch, since they would actually be saving money by switching. (We provided @Home at the time, which provided content so people used to AOL wouldn't feel too out of place.)

Amen

[Christopher Bibbs]

If I was out of work I'd cut the cable, cable modem, Netflix membership, sell my motorcycles, and anything else to keep food on the table (and keep the table). The article states the painfully obvious. Broadband comes out of discresionary spending and when you need to save money, dropping down to regular dial-up is a viable option to many people.

So long as I have disposable income, however, the extra $20/month to have a cable modem as opposed to a traditional dial-up is worth more, than say, my weekly trip to the arcade.

A better (real) story would be about people who aren't worried about their jobs or the economy dropping broadband because they see no value in it.

We're in a transition time...

[Carpathius]

Broadband won't go away. It may be more expensive, or harder to get, but it won't go away.

This is really a transition time for computer communication/web/distributed computing. People haven't really figured out what the web is good for, and companies haven't really figured out how to use it.

As the kids that are around ten years old today grow into adulthood -- kids that can't imagine life without computers, the net, and web -- these are the kids who'll first really see how it will all integrate into their lives.

Broadband will be part of it. I have no idea how it'll look, but it'll be there. My suspicion is that we'll have a single cable that handles all communications -- TV, Phone, Computers, new stuff -- and that things will become more and more networked within a home. Maybe not -- but I'm not worried about broadband in the long run.

Might worry about losing my current DSL connection though...

Sean.

Re:Wow. I don't think I could ever go back.

[J. J. Ramsey]

"That said, I can imagine that for many users, high speed access is a frivolity. Let's face it: you need a high speed connection mainly for gaming, porn, and overwrought sites with lots of graphics."

Don't forget large or medium-size downloads, like StarOffice, or Windows shareware, or JVMs, or Linux free software, or mp3s.

I am among the luddites!

[peteshaw]

Yeah, I dropped my dsl line back in October. My carrier got bought out by RealConnect and at the end of my one year contract I was notified that my 49.95 128K IDSL line would be *slightly* going up to $169.95!

What really annoyed me was the letter itself. Okay, I can understand if costs go up. But (a) there was no apology in the letter and (b)I was given 7 days to make up my mind on continuing the contract.

So I call up RealConnect and mildly explain my position, which is that you are trying to gouge me with an insanely high price. They in turn blamed Network Access Solutions for ratcheting up the residential rates to match business class. NAS is the only provider to the local switch, so after some research, I figured I was pretty much hosed.

Needless to say I do my big downloads from work and at home I say, "Welcome to NetZero!"

Postscript: After one month plus at 28.8K (my phone lines are &@#'d up buts thats another story) I don't knotice it that much. When I'm online my phone calls are forwarded to my cell, and I can't download ISO's, MP3's, or mulimedia, but who cares? I can easily do without that junk. Email, ebay, online shopping, messaging, you can do 90% of your stuff with a dog slow connection.

Dial-up is cheap!

[UnixFerEver]

The article states and several people around here argue that dial-up access costs > $20 a month. While that might be true if you go with one of the big-boys like Earthlink, there are lots of smaller cheaper alternatives.

I get perfectly good service (almost no busy signals) from a small local ISP that charges me $99 a year. That comes to just over $8 a month which is less than 1/5 of what broadband access would cost me.

If you are a heavy music-trader/online-game-player/whatever then sure, pay for the broadband. But for those of us who just use email, check websites, and watch our bank statements, its a no-brainer decision.

Tough on isp's?

[zaphod123]

I work for an isp. In the end, we make more money off a dial-up customer than we do off a dsl customer. To compete with the lecs we have to keep the profit margin on dsl down to a bare minimum. Combine that with the pipe that is necessary to get all the dsl customer's to our router and we end up with a very small profit margin.
If all of our dsl customers went back to dial, we would actually be making more money.

One missing fact: 'She' is broke

[rjamestaylor]

She bailed out AFTER losing her job. Duh. As a WORKING professional I cannot do without broadband.

I am an AT&T Broadband customer and am very satisified. Very little down time (much less than PacBell/GTE/Verizon DSL I've experienced). Fast connections. Good tech support (once you get past the 1000th level of voice prompts from the I-wanted-to-be-a-Top-40s-announcer male voice).

Even for a wireless I prefer broadband. Love that Richochet - want it back.

There are other reasons...

[Da VinMan]

I have considered dumping my cable modem too, and here's why (and they're not your given reasons):

1. It's spendy. I could use the $46/month on something else. And it's going up. They're going to keep jacking prices until a considerable number of people drop off, then they might back down a bit. But if no one drops off, they'll just keep raising it.

2. You don't *really* need it. I use my cable modem extensively, and about 50% of what I do could be accomplished with dialup. Well what about the other 50% you ask? Most of that is stuff I don't need to do. Downloading various types of multimedia, game demos, etc. are not things that I require professionally or otherwise; I could live without them. I can also live without internet newscasts, etc. I don't need those either. I can read the AP or Reuters off of Yahoo! instead.

That about sums it up. I haven't had any hassles at all compared to a lot of the horror stories I've heard, but most of those seem related to DSL issues (which is apparently the real quality culprit most of the time).

BTW - Getting rid of cars would severely cripple our economy. By comparison, very few people would notice if broadband went away.

Re:So be a friendly webmaster...install mod_gzip

[cloudmaster]

I've compared the same site with and without mod_gzip over a modem, and mod_gzip is definately faster. http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/Performance/Compr ession/PPP.html [w3.org] agrees - fewer packets because of smaller data = faster performance on a modem. In addition, V.42bis checks to see if its own compression would be beneficial or not, and if not, it switches over to transparent mode. V.44 does the same thing, and compresses better. At http://www.digit-life.com/articles/compressv44vsv4 2bis/ [digit-life.com], if you look at table3, you'll see that pkzip compresses everything [that's not already compressed] about twice as much as either modem standard.

So, mod_gzip *does* in fact help out modem users, as it compresses data much more than any modem does, reducing the total amount of data to be sent by a greater amount while simultaneously reducing the number of packets sent.

I use mod_gzip, and everyone else should too. :)

Re:Going back

[GreyPoopon]

That's the problem with the cable modems, it's a shared line. So you'll notice different times of the day will be faster than others.

I'm not going to dispute your statements, but I wanted to point out that there's much more to speed considerations than the whole "shared line" concept of cable modem. Let me spell it out a bit. Both DSL and Cable employ shared sections of their network. Both can suffer when oversubscribed. The primary difference is that correcting the problem on DSL is easier and cheaper. It involves duplicating the portions of equipment (usually located at the CO) that are overloaded. Cable, on the other hand, requires a trip 'cross country to correct the problem, and could ulimately lead to the need to bury additional cable to meet demands. Cable is divided into different "nodes," which constitute the shared portion of the connection. When cable slows down, it could be (among other things) that the node is overloaded (difficult to fix), or that the pipe between the node and the cable company is not fat enough (easier to fix).

Despite all of this, my experience has been that the single biggest bottleneck for every internet service I have had is the throughput between the provider and the internet itself. Either their pipe to the internet was a "garden hose," or the section of the internet they connected to wasn't exactly running at a spanking pace. Case in point: I used to have double channel ISDN. This is in some ways similar to DSL. Even though I had a capacity of 128 Kbps, I found that I rarely jumped over 64 Kbps unless I was hitting servers at the ISP (who happened to be the phone company). Because of some changes in price structure, I decided to go with another ISP. Under their configuration, I could only achieve 56Kbps on each channel (for a total of 112Kbps), but I found that my connection was usually running at between 90 and 110Kbps. The difference? The new ISP made sure their connection to the internet was adequate for their subscriber base.

Some suggestions:

• See where the bottleneck is first. Try hitting servers located at your ISP. If your throughput to them is good, you can be sure that your shared connection has nothing to do with your problems.
• See if you can find somebody else, preferably in a new neighborhood who has the same provider but is on a different little-used node. If they're speed is good, then you know the problem is in your shared cable. Seek DSL. :)

I'd love a slow broadband

[neves]

I'd love to have a cheap and slow (e.g., 64K) connection where I could stay on line 24h a day. What bothers me the most is the need to connect each time I want to verify an email or visit an URL when I'm in a dial up.

You sure have a market for this out of USA. Remember that out of the USA, you have to pay your telecom company for the time you use your phone in local calls. Here in Brazil we have to connect, download the emails, disconect, reply all, select the URLs you want to visit, connect, visit each URL and have your email sent, disconnect, read everything, connect, follow some links, disconnect,...