This is a sore topic with me. I moved to Florida with the assurance
from the local provider (Sprint) that I would have DSL. Also my friend
living 1 mile away had DSL. But no, I can't have it. That's because the
condominium splitter is a fiber type, SLC, and it won't work with DSL.
A $10,000 conversion card is needed.
The point is that an area can have DSL, but that might not be available
to all customers on the line. It is a MAJOR problem for me. Sprint
records still don't show this, only the technician who comes to the
property knows this. I don't think the system is really committed to
universal broadband access.
In the San Francisco bay area, silicon valley, the large companies have
TI and the best broadband access. Residences pay about $50 a month for
the lowest kind of DSL (608k/128k) The local telco controls all
hookups and they are slow and undependable. Many ISPs offer the
service. Speed varied a lot. In 2000, you could see the cable optical
fiber being installed by the traffic jams on the streets. I found cable
broadband speeds to be similar to DSL. But it was always on. Watching
the network activity light flickering on the modem made me wonder if my
computer was being hacked. DSL is better because you can turn it off.
On Wednesday, September 18, 2002, at 11:33 PM, David Gratton wrote:
In Canada, when we talk consumer broadband (for the Internet) we are
talking generally a megabit a second "ish" and often considerably
higher. Naturally many servers and network congestion makes attaining
this not always possible, but for the most part we are very fortunate
in our broadband connectivity and capacity.
That said, I am curious what broadband means or implies elsewhere on
the planet in regards to the Internet.
I ask because things have changed considerably in the last 5 years.
When I was living in Munich, ISDN was broadband (and expensive). When
I was living in Singapore, 56k was pretty much all you could get, but
now I understand they have laid fibre all over the country. Is DSL in
California still limited? Any insight would be helpful to me.
