Internet access: DSL, cable, or...what?

Please excuse my inexcusable ignorance on this topic, but before I subject myself to an aggressive round of advertising pitches, I thought I’d try the Dope, which is where I always go for true wisdom.

Currently I get my home internet access (1 desktop PC, 1 laptop PC, wifi) through Qwest DSL. Qwest provides my landline phone service, too; but I’d like to get rid of my landline.

So I thought of switching to cable modem…but I don’t have cable TV and don’t want it. (If I had it, I’d watch it, and I don’t need that kind of time-suck. That’s what the web is for.)

Is there an obvious option I’m missing? I live in Seattle, if location makes a difference.

If you’re lucky enough to have both DSL and cable available, you can choose the one you get for speed and price reasons.

Outside of that, just remember that DSL is a dedicated line to you only. The speed and capacity will not vary if your neighbors get online and start playing games, because they have their own, dedicated lines, too.

Cable is a shared medium, and if your neighborhood is overloaded with users, your speed and capacity will be adversely affected. The cable company can avoid this by adding more fiber, but they might not be as quick to expand as you might like.

As far as how likely this is to happen IRL, I cannot give you any experience, as I only have cable in my neighborhood at 5Mb/sec download (3 and 10 is available) and I love it.

Satellite is available anywhere, but tends to be more expensive both for installation and monthly charges. Beyond that, it offers great speed, but suffers from latency (delays in roundtrip signals) since the signal has to travel a long ways and the distance is a noticable fraction of the speed of light. This bothers gamers, who need a fast connection in both directions, but might not bother a typical Internet browser person. So satellite is the last-ditch choice for remote locations where the alternative is only dialup.

When you compare speeds, always check the rate both down and up. They are often not the same; down is faster than up by a factor of 10. Then consider your expected use. A typical online user is browsing web pages; he sends a small packet of requests and is rewarded with a large flood of data. This suits the asymmetric process well, but YMMV.

Another consideration. Many cable companies now provide phone lines, and cheaper than Ma Bell. If you subscribe to both phone and Internet, you may get a discount for bundling. I dropped AT&T after using them all my life and now I get Internet, TV and phone thru the cable provider.

  • it’s worked great for us, and I think it’d be worth looking into. It’s fiber optic to your house, so there’s room to grow the bandwidth…

The install took about a day, but once installed, we’ve been very happy with the service. Even the bloody tech support seem to be on the ball.

Another (possible) option you might explore is Clearwire. I don’t think there would be a problem with plugging a router into a Clearwire modem. Speed/bandwidth may be an issue (you don’t say what kind of load you put on your connection), but my daughter has just their basic package and seems perfectly happy with it.

The OP doesn’t seem to be clear on the idea that Cable Television is not Cable Internet. You can have one without the other. I have Time Warner’s broadband cable service and no television service. Costs me $42.95/mo.

So if you are thinking about switching to cable internet, but decided you can’t because you don’t want cable tv in your home…don’t let that stop you.

Agreed, with a couple of additions. I don’t know how much satellite has changed since I’d had Starband (I’d expect not much), but at that time the upload speed for a two-way uplink could actually be as slow as dialup (they claimed 150k uplink IIRC, but nobody got that speed, more like 50-80kbps), while download had a sometimes maddening delay – click on a link, and 1-4 seconds later the entire page would load very quickly, but nothing at all would happen in the interim.

My 2¢-
Although DSL is not a 'shared" resource like cable, in my experience cable’s download speeds are always much, much higher than ordinary DSL. I can get 14Mbs on my Cox cable, while the highest DSL I’ve seen is in the 1.5Mbps range. Upload speeds aren’t nearly as high, but so what.

You’re right, I wasn’t clear on that idea. Thanks for the explanation.

Also, I don’t think I put much of a load on my connection. I’m not a gamer. Probably the most I ask of my connection is to play youtube videos.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Will consider all. Others?

I have Comcast cable and it works great. I think the “shared” part is overblown because it is unlikely that you and your neighbors will be downloading massive files at the same time.

That said, we are switching to FIOS in two days. It sounds incredible with huge download speeds as well as upload speeds. I would choose that if you have a choice. Otherwise, I would opt for cable but there is no way to know your options.

My teenage sons inform me that cable is ever-so-much faster and more desirable. However, I have Quest DSL, too, and you have to keep in mind that your rate may be “for life”, as mine is. My local cable price is low for the first 3 months, but after that will most likely climb higher and higher over the years. I keep envisioning myself being 80 years old with a fixed income and a $300 a month cable internet bill, and thinking that I could still be paying $24.99 if I hadn’t switched over way back in '07!

For the record, I download lots. and lots. and lots. and lots. of stuff over my cable connection, all day long (and upload too, at 30kbps max) and live in a nice little neighborhood with plenty of pals on this “line” and I have absolutely no speed problems ever.

Though they are different, when we were looking cable internet without cable TV was relatively expensive, since the cable company wants to sell packages. Since we trashed our cable for satellite, that didn’t work for us. I probably use my computer like you do, and DSL seems fine - and we have two computers on it. My daughter has FIOS in her apartment, and she likes it. I don’t know what she’s paying, but she isn’t rich. It comes with a UPS, which I think is pretty cool.

Still, I don’t know if you can get DSL without a landline, though ours is AT&T from before SBC bought them, so the local telco didn’t get anything out of it.