Thanks to all who replied so far.
Mike, my situation in a Seattle suburb is a bit different from yours on
the island. My current ISP was founded by a former university SysAdmin
colleague. I've been using them for 18 years. They are a Century Link
provider. They started offering individuals and small businesses more
for their money than the big providers did. In 1998, for one reasonable
fee, I got 1.5 M DSL, a Web site, email, spam filtering and UNIX shell
access. Eventually they sold the business. The current owners have
changed direction, emphasizing small-to-medium sized businesses
services. They have kept individual users like me, but will not offer
me any higher speed. Nor can I keep my site or email if I go elsewhere.
Century Link only offers up to 3.0 Mbps DSL on the phone lines in my
area. They have a growing fiber infrastructure in some neighborhoods in
Seattle proper. My neighborhood doesn't appear to be in their plans for
the foreseeable future. Judging from the amount of junk mail I get from
them, they have decided that marketing is more important than actually
delivering speed. I could upgrade to 3.0 M, but why bother? That's
still too slow to warrant upsetting all the other arrangements.
Comcast, which I do not love, is the only other alternative where I
live. I used to have what they called Expanded Basic cable, which was
approximately what they call now their 220+ channel tier--pretty much
everything except HBO, Showtime, etc. The price of that slowly rose
over the years, with most of the good channels unbundled to a higher
tier. When my price exceeded $70/month, I said "Enough!" and downgraded
to the most basic cable service.
But Comcast uses its own cable infrastructure for Internet. They have
packages that offer far faster speeds than 25 Mbps (75 and 150). I'm
not interested in those because those speeds were probably measured once
at 2:00 am and are not worth the premium. Besides, I don't do video
games or have 6 people streaming video simultaneously. It's just my
wife and me. I just want to be able to stream a movie now and then, and
download a notch or two faster than I can now. Comcast offers "limited
basic" cable plus 25 Mbps for $70/month. If I get rid of my current ISP
and Century-Link DSL, I just about break even on that. Even if I only
get 10 or even 5 Mbps during prime time, that's still a vast
improvement. Certainly worth buying a cable modem.
Frankly, I dislike doing business with the digital version of Sleazy
Joe's Used Cars, the home of Bait and Switch, where even the sticker
prices are imaginary. But they are the only game in town. I pushed their
keyboard chat representative for the cost once the introductory rate
expires. I had to ask several time, but eventually he told me that the
current, non-promotion rate for my package is $74. That's OK. I have
saved the chat session. If they jack the price up drastically, I'll
just have to gird my loins, negotiate with them, and avoid screaming
obscenities. :-)
If you know something I don't, or if there's something wrong with my
reasoning, please let me know.
--Peter
>> Comcast can offer me 25 Mbps
> Peter, If Comcast is using the same wire as 19thCenturyLink how do
you know that Comcast can really push 25 mbps?
> I am getting impossible pie-in-the-sky offers all of the time. @
13,000' out this rusty wire can support 4mbps no matter who's selling.
> First thing I would do is to ask the neighbors. And you may need a
new modem too.
Mike
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