RE: "Their Cable Competitor, TCI, now tells me they haven't a CLUE when cable Modem access will be available in my neighborhood."
Hi Paul, aside from the fact I could merge a home phone line and computer line into one DSL line, and have lower fees, cable's sometimes inability to organize and proliferate is one reason why I went with DSL.
Also, I'm not keen on cable's control over content - i.e. possibly promoting their own content. DSL is just plumbing and is content independent. I gained the impression cable would like to control content viewing to only their own content, when one cable company announced their intent to not allow their Internet customers the freedom to view Internet portals which compete with the cable company's content. Competition by control. This backfired- their customers had a fit. (Not sure what the final outcome was.) Not something DSL would do to its customer base - since DSL is content independent, they don't promote their own content.
I am keen on portal's: more educational material, more choices, enables more independents [a term used to describe independent video producers who are not under the control of the major studios who control/decide what you and me would like to view], and portals will probably be less costly. All things which are better for the consumer. And the more portals there are, the more chips are needed to operate more portals.
According to my friend, his PacBell DSL downstream speed can be as fast as 1 GB/sec, even though they advertise a guarantee min of 350 MB/sec. Amazingly fast.
Amy J |
