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To: trouthead who wrote (16086)	10/9/1999 2:38:00 PM
From: ld5030	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

<<What will stop the DSL providers from providing true 8 mbit dsl at a competitive price?>> The rate for ADSL at 8mbps is much, much higher than cable. You will never get 8mbps anyway unless you live on top of the phone company. The RBOCS can run FTTH, but then they would be a cable company, wouldn't they? <<Infrastructure cost will continue to come down as DSL is deployed.>> Same with cable, only cable is much farther along. The cost of DSL can only drop to the base price of the technology. Mass deployment only goes so far. I'm no expert on wireless, but seems that with all those ones and zeros flying through the air you might lose a few to interference. Also, what's to stop anyone from intercepting a signal?

To: trouthead who wrote (16086)	10/9/1999 5:14:00 PM
From: drmorgan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

What will stop the DSL providers from providing true 8 mbit dsl at a competitive price? You might get that rate if you live 100' from the CO. In my area (Salt Lake City) 256k DSL is the norm. I've checked al the local ISP's about getting a 512k DSL connection but they all charge you for a business account so the breakdown would be $65 for the US West DSL line and another $40 for a local ISP business account, yeah that is real competitive with @Home. I've lost my @Home account because of moving, hope to get it soon at the new place and I'm trying to put off a DSL line. Just don't know how long I can handle dial up after having @Home for months :-(. If you have access to both DSL and Cable I can't see why anyone would go for DSL. The DSL guys (including the ISP's) keep spouting off about the shared cable network slowing down, well I never saw it and if anything it got faster!

To: trouthead who wrote (16086)	10/9/1999 6:14:00 PM
From: E. Davies	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 29970

Others have already commented that 8mbit dsl has a limited range. Around 1- 1.5 miles I think. It would be quite possible to live in the middle of a major urban or suburban area and be still be further than that from the CO. Then you need to include the fact that some lines have load coils which need to be located and removed and the fact that too many DSL lines operating at once can cause degradation from crosstalk (thats part of the physics that come from the lack of a waveguide). Still- many will be able to get DSL in various forms and speeds. It is not a competition to take lightly at all. I'd like feedback from the thread on this: It's my opinion that the eventual "universality" of cable will be a signficant advantage in the mind of the consumer. They see their brother or their friend with cable and they want it too. More importantly they know if they can get it. Noone has to come out and test the lines, noone has to pull out a map and measure the distance to the CO (once they find out where it is!) People in general like to move en masse. They expect there to be one method to solve a problem. Look to the success of Windows and AOL as examples. They will pick the "one" that is most widely available and let that mindset gel as the primary broadband experience. Anyone who does not have the time or energy to evaluate all the options will pick cable. Maybe the posters on SI are not necessarily like this, but what of your average consumer? Opinions? Eric

To: trouthead who wrote (16086)	10/11/1999 12:01:00 AM
From: Solid	Respond to of 29970

A personal perspective from .thefool thread on athm: 10/10PM(Especially the last two sentences of the first main paragraph) If you are truly worried about DSL do your homework and draw your conclusion. Instinet, you hit the nail on head. Virtually every prognostication over the future of broadband has cable ahead of Dsl with some exception. This is the majority consensus of analysts and most followers of the emerging broadband business. I am not sure anyone can say conclusively what will happen but we can evaluate certain facts to levy our own opinions. For example cable is currently the broadband leader. They offer a faster, cheaper, scaleable service that has the potential to be many times faster than it already is. Additionally always on connections in cable are ubiquitous, whereas this is not the case for dsl. Cable will be much easier to install once cable ready computers start rolling out. These are some of the many reasons I have invested a much greater percentage of my portfolio in cable broadband vs dsl. The clincher was personal experience with both technologies. I live in one of the rare areas where both dsl and cable are available, and most of my peers have chosen cable for reasons listed. For those of you who are concerned that is perfectly acceptable, as complacency breeds failure. Its innapropriate however to permit an article that amounts to biased advertisement sway your mood on the cable vs dsl warfront. There are many points that we can hash out regarding the various pros and cons, which would actually be a very productive use of time. In fact, I think this has much greater implications for @home than these ridiculous rumors that have run rampant of late. This article is not research-worthy reading. Before we can successfully evaluate which side will win, we must be able to sift through the articles and pick out the gold from the garbage. It should be obvious though that a company making predictions about it's own product must be taken with a grain of salt. Eljar

To: trouthead who wrote (16086)	10/11/1999 12:29:00 AM
From: tom offenbach	Respond to of 29970

Junior, The DSL providers are NOT supplying the backbone/Internet connectivity. Performance is only as good as the weakest link in the chain. The same holds true for ATHM, however, ATHM is also the backbone supplier to its customers. The 'net/net' :) of this is that it doesn't matter how fast your local loop is if the network that it's connecting to is the bottle neck. The fact that most RBOC's and CLECs don't own national IP networks(they buy peering/transit) makes it hard to believe that they'll spend a minimum of $20K/month for DS3/45Mbps connectivity(BTW - this figure would be an absolute minimum) and sell DSL for approx. $50/Mbps. It doesn't scale. Theoretically, neither would ATHM's. ATHM's approach to this problem is their parallel network.....bringing the content as close to the user as possible and trying to keep as much traffic as possible on their own network. This situation drills down to the core of the debate over HFC vs DSL. Who stands the most to gain, MSO's or RBOC's? It appears that the MSO's do as they'll realize more utility(offering more services over their pipes) without cannibalizing their existing customer base. tom