To add: that wikipedia article seemed to imply that fiber to the customer’s home (FTTP) is common. It most definitely ISN’T. I have heard of a few super-new housing developments that already had fiber to the home, and AT&T got permission to use that existing fiber, but they definitely DON’T run fiber to homes themselves. At most, they use existing fiber.
That’s all well and good… but it’s still DSL. It’s right there in the name. VDSL is obviously more advanced than ADSL, but the point is that it’s still running over ordinary unshielded twisted pair. That’s virtually the definition of DSL. Their solution to the “last mile” problem was to turn it into a “last few hundred meters” problem. The fact that they don’t call it VDSL is just a marketing thing.
Verizon does quite a bit of fiber to the home, but yes the U-verse service is a use of DSL technology however it does not use DSL infrastructure. So the technology still is being used in a different way, short range hookups to homes which that allow greater speeds over twisted pair.
I’ve actually seen set ups where businesses with buildings close to a Central Office would order a dry pair between buildings, actually these were alarm lines and very cheap (Less then $10/month, sometimes less then $5) and run their own DSL service over them which would have cost them quite a bit more to buy as data lines.
Depends on how you define “rural.” Farther than 3 miles or so from the Central Office or an active node, it doesn’t exist because the maximum speed drops off drastically with distance. Not so with cable.
DSL isn’t available in any of the rural environments near me, but cable isn’t, either, not for technological reasons, but financial ones. Cable companies want more population density to make the lines profitable.
So I currently use ATT for high speed DSL. Never really had a problem with it. Got a letter yesterday from ATT saying that they were discontinuing DSL in our area and transitioning us to ATT Uverse fiber optic internet with at least the same speeds or better. They indicate that our pricing will not change and that the switch over will be done at their cost.
I’m gonna call them, but curious if anyone knows how the Uverse internet service is delivered into the house, via the phone lines (like our current DSL), coaxial cable, ???.
Not via the phone line. In our case, it is fiber optic, I believe, that comes into the house. Could be coax, though. A completely new wire, anyway.
We have a bundle with phone and TV, and the main box that that wire goes into feeds into the internal home phone lines for our phone service. It also has a cat 6 cable that runs to a box near our TV, for our TV service.