# Cable / DSL Alternatives, broadband.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cable-dsl-alternatives-broadband/245158>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [May 14, 2004, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cable-dsl-alternatives-broadband/245158 "2004-05-14T19:53:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Ryle\_Dup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Ryle\_Dup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryle_Dup)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cable-dsl-alternatives-broadband/245158/1 "2004-05-14T19:53:25Z")

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I’m (hopefully) going to be moving in a couple months, but the new place I’m gonna move into apparently isn’t in the coverage area of any of the local cable/DSL companies. I checked a couple of satellite companies but they all have terrible uplinks unless you pay them like $500 a month and get a huge honkin government satellite, that isn’t really an option.

I’m (my family) is really lookin for something that is reasonable for playing games, good latency, with a good downlink/uplink speed, but is it possible without DSL / Cable coverage to get anything like this thats under an absurd $200/month?

Also, I was wondering how you could find out the expense of actually putting in some sort of line, I don’t know much about this but the property is pretty close to Skywalker Ranch, and I know they had huge fiberoptic links put in. I assume it’s possible but we really just need a residential sort of line, so nothing crazy. Anyone know much about this? I’m really a newbie to it all so any explanations would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

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**Author:** ![slortar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6bbea6/32.png) [@slortar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slortar)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cable-dsl-alternatives-broadband/245158/2 "2004-05-14T20:24:20Z")

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If you can’t do cable/dsl and don’t want to fork over the dough for satellite, the only other option left I can think of would be ISDN. It’s only about twice as fast as normal dialup and somewhat more expensive. And you want to look **very** carefully at your local call package. ISDN tends to really slam your local service between the disconnect/reconnects. But it does (marginally) qualify as broadband.

Personally, if I had a choice between ISDN and dialup, I’d stick with the dialup, particularly if you can get a decent 56k connection where you’re at. The speed boost isn’t worth the jump in cost and possible annoyances.

Of course, you could always run a cable across George’s property line and steal his bandwidth. 😃

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**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\
**Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cable-dsl-alternatives-broadband/245158/3 "2004-05-14T22:30:02Z")

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You might want to look into fixed wireless. After years of slamming my head into the wall waiting for DSL and cable to come our way, I finally found an ad in the paper for DTN Speednet Wireless. We get a consistent 500k upstream/250k downstream for about $50 a month, and I couldn’t be happier.