I feel for those of you who are still on dial up internet. I do miss the quaint sound of a 56K modem, however. I told someone the other day that I want that for me ringtone. We’ve been on DSL for several years now, and it’s generally been dependable.

Recently I was told that cable internet is faster. I didn’t really believe that, but as I looked into it, I discovered that our local cable company had upgraded their technology significantly since we left their service many moons ago. Several folks warned me that my connection would drag if there were lots of people on cable internet at the same time. I was told that it wasn’t dependable. However, a pastor friend was using cable internet and Skype for his phone on cable internet and assured me he’d had no problems.

So I decided to check into it myself. I called Cablevision and scheduled a hookup. The service guys arrived on the day they said they would and ran a line to where I requested. I chose to buy a cable modem rather than rent one from Cablevision ($5/mo). My cost was $43.73 from Amazon.com.

The only problem I had was my modem arrived on Wednesday, and it took calling repeatedly to Cablevision until Friday to get someone to return my call and tell me how to connect it all up. They had given me no login ID, no nothing. When I called 24-hour tech support (a third party provider), they said that my account showed that I had rented a cable modem. Grrr. That was frustrating.

Finally, however, I got a call back, and got things hooked up. Before I disconnected my DSL, I ran several speed tests using speedtest.net and internetfrog.com. Here are the results:

Then I hooked up the cable modem, configured my wireless router and was prepared to test my connection with it. This was tested using a wired connection, not wireless. Again, I tested several times. The cable guy told me that I would get different speeds at different times, but on average, they would always be faster than DSL. Here are the results of testing over a three-hour time span:

Frankly, I was amazed. Cable was much faster than the DSL connection. My mind was made up. Or so I thought.

I called AT&T to disconnect our DSL service. The rep looked up my account and said that I wasn’t getting the fastest speed they offered. My response was that when we had upgraded our service a year ago, we had opted for the highest speed since Carolyn’s business depends upon a good, high-speed internet connection (and because Sam and I play Xbox Live all the time). He responded that it had increased since then, and that he could offer me guaranteed 6mbs download for $30 per month.

Dilemma. 6mbs per month is still slower than what we’re seeing on average from cable. At times, it’s much slower. However, it’s half of what we’re paying for the cable internet ($49.95 for best package + $10 surcharge since we don’t have cable TV). The AT&T rep also began to explain why cable internet is sooooo bad… less secure, less dependable, more people on the net at a time means slower connections… etc.

That pretty much torqued me off. When a company can offer me twice the speed that I’m getting for the exact same cost as what I’m currently paying, why wouldn’t it tell me? We were totally in the dark about this. That’s rather frustrating. In my mind, the way to keep and make a happy customer is to proactively offer discounts.

“Sir, we did a periodic evaluation of your account. We noticed that you’re currently paying $30/month for an older DSL package. We would love to upgrade you to twice the speed at no extra cost. Would you be OK with that?”

Imagine how you would respond to such courtesy.

But, I guess that’s a dream world.

Anyway, I did grouse a little, at which the rep offered me a free month to try the new DSL speed and see how it compared to cable. I quickly took his offer.

Here are the results of the new, higher-speed DSL package:

That is twice as fast as what we were getting with the previous DSL package. However, it’s dismal compared to the average speeds of cable internet. It’s pretty obvious that AT&T has throttled their internet. The needle at speedtest.com hits a brick wall at 5. Don’t pass go; don’t collect $200. I have never received higher than 5mbs (in spite of supposedly paying for 6mbs). Soooo… therein lies my dilemma.

I now know that I can get much faster net speed through the cable company. Of course, you pay for it.

If you’re looking for better internet speed and are able to receive cable or DSL, I’d recommend cable at this point. We’ve had no down time (of course, it’s only been a week or so). At this point, we’re still trying to make the final decision. Since we will eventually be dropping our home phone and using Vonage or Skype for phone (in addition to our cells), we are really in a win-win situation.

The future for consumer communication choice looks very bright for us all. Now if we can just convince U.S. companies to quit throttling the internet in order to make more $ off of us.

On this day...

Review: The Red Sea Rules (rated 4 stars) - 2010
Life Principles for Following Christ - 2008
Ode to the Drew Theater - 2007
Is it fair? - 2007

12 Comments

Doug April 28, 2009 at 6:18 pm

I’ve said it before: AT&T is evil. They promise one thing, but you have to beat them severely about the head and shoulders for them to deliver. You have a beautiful experience with them for you iPhone because otherwise, Steve Jobs would shop the thing to Verizon too, and kill their monopoly.

I’m curious on your cable pricing–I didn’t realize they had multiple levels–we’re paying $29.95, without the no-cable surcharge, since we have cable. But, I don’t know about the speed. (well, the old computer is getting speed like a fat turtle going uphill, but it’s a P-2, 1GHz processor. With Win98)

I like the cable over the DSL, we didn’t have an issue with connect, because all we had to do was plug it in. I have no user name either, just a wide open connection to the web.

Doug

Dougs last blog post..Politics and Math

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TJ April 28, 2009 at 8:07 pm

Nice review. Please note that not all cable companies have such a wide response on speed tests. As a former manager of the product you are testing, I’m rather disappointed in the results, as it should be a consistent 5.5-6megs. I’m on InsightBB at home, and as you know, I now manage Inside Connect Cable internet in Shepherdsville, KY. Consistently the speeds on both services are between 9 and 10mbps down with 1mbps up.

A lot of people will use blanket statements about cable, yet they have no clue how the technology really is set up (thus the AT&T reps comments about cable – which I’m glad you didn’t repeat).
The key with cable is a clean RF plant (cable lingo for an interference-free cable signal to and from your home with optimum gain on both ends).

If that’s good, as long as the cable company has bought enough bandwidth from an upstream ISP, your speeds should be consistent.

This brings me to the thought of un-unthrottled bandwidth, it’s pretty much a bandwidth management issue. I can’t speak to DSL’s tech (other than their distance-limits) but for cable, they could open all cable modems up to the 30mbps/5mbps maximum HOWEVER, your speeds would vary much more than they do now. Not only would you be dealing with the demand on the internet circuit (t-1′s, DS3, OC3, etc), but you are going to max out the bandwidth available on the internet “channels” on the cable plant. A rural cable co will pay anywhere from $50-$120+ PER MEG for bandwidth on the circuit. When a provider who is ensuring a good product consistently peaks over 90% of their purchased bandwidth, they have to buy more. A company with 600 subscribers offering 6mbps service will often have 30 megs available on the high end from their circuit, which is more than enough. But, bump them all up to 10mbps, then it’s going ot cost the provider more as they will have to get to a 40-45meg circuit.

Now that I’ve seen DSL and Cable side-by-side out in the installation world, it’s cable for me. BUT I haven’t seen Fiber to the home working, and I’m curious to see how that product plays in this competitive market.

TJs last blog post..I don’t have time…

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Chuck April 28, 2009 at 10:50 pm

I wonder if there is a distance issue with cable like ATT tells me there is with DSL. Here in Tanglewood ATT tells me i’m at the maximum distance for DSL and cant get the fastest speeds. They’ve tried to “turn it up” and i can’t keep a connection. They turn it down to 389K /s and it holds fine. Anyone else live in Tanglewood that has Cable internet? I’d sure like to try it. If i could get 2meg i’d be happy.

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grant... April 29, 2009 at 12:17 am

not to boast (sort of) but i just did that test with my cable internet…here are the results..

download – 10.98
upload – 2.68

i guess living in little rock has its advantages!

grant…s last blog post..Michael and Melanie

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Shane Glass April 29, 2009 at 12:35 am

Jeff, here’s a link to my Speedtest results using AT&T’s top tier DSL option: http://www.speedtest.net/result/462449006.png

I was able to hold pretty constant at this speed. I’ve noticed on more popular items like TV torrents and iTunes connections that my connection can exceed this, but usually maxes out at 6 or 7 Mb.

My experience with cable at home was a good one. We were getting constant disconnections and had a tech guy come out. Turns out we had some unnecessary splits and old cabling under our house (in VA we have these things called basements– what wonders!). The tech guy replaced the cables and connections for free and instantly our drops ceased and bandwidth increased.

I remember researching my options here. In the end I went with DSL because (at the time) the promised speed was the best for the price. We don’t have cable, so there would be the $10 surcharge plus $5 for the rental. (I don’t buy the modems as I had bad experiences with our cable ones back home). That means I’d be paying $65 before any taxes. On the other hand, after a $10 surcharge for a dry DSL line (that is, no land line connection) I pay a flat $45 every month.

I am the last house within city limits on my street and since I got the DSL several months ago, I have had absolutely no downtime or laggy connections. I use strictly wireless with my Apple Base Station Extreme (802.11n) and things have worked flawlessly as far as AT&T goes.

I know a lot of people complain, but from my experience AT&T’s service has been exceptional, both DSL and cell. Granted, yes, the prices for cell service in particular is exuberant, but I am satisfied with the service.

That’s my two cents. Hope you enjoy your l33+ gaming on X-box. My wife won’t let me have one.

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Shane Glass April 29, 2009 at 12:38 am

One more thing to add:

Notice that AT&T’s upstream is about twice as fast as cable’s. That might prove useful in Carolyn’s situation when she uploads a lot of photos or other things. I know I enjoy it.

Shane Glasss last blog post..Mock University of Arkansas-Monticello Website

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Elton April 29, 2009 at 8:55 am

The phone company always starts throwing out that line about cable internet being a “shared media” type service. It’s true that the more people get on, the slower your connection between your house and the cable head-end. What they don’t tell you is that they have their own bottle-neck wherever they put their DSLAM (DSL Access Multiplexer), whether it’s in a cabinet in your neighborhood or in the central office. The concept of “statistical multiplexing” – the idea that not all people are going to be using the full amount of their connection at the same time, so I can give my backbone a lot less than than the sum of my subscribers’ bandwidth – is used in both cases. Both cable and DSL have bottlenecks, it just that they happen to be in different parts of the network. I feel like the phone company is always being disingenuous when they tell us about cable’s problems.

Eltons last blog post..Why I hate soccer: Reason #835

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Rachelle April 29, 2009 at 12:03 pm

We use cable. We love it. It’s faast. Only time we notice ANY slowdown is if we try to watch a movie on Netflix at night. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it to run right. But overall we’ve been really happy with Comcast’s version of cable! By the way, on the pricing, look for deals online then print screen them and show them to your cable guy. Bet he will match them. Our’s did!

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tj April 29, 2009 at 1:47 pm

to answer the question about cable being limited by distance: no. Just about all cable internet providers use hybrid fiber-coax. Meaning they run fiber optic lines to distribute signal to the neighborhoods. because of this, you get the same speed 20 miles away that I would get right next door to the cable co headend.

tjs last blog post..I don’t have time…

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Jeff April 29, 2009 at 3:40 pm

I’m getting dismal speed tests this afternoon. The net on cable is moving like a sick dog.

Here’s the results:

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Chuck May 5, 2009 at 4:37 pm

Still a lot faster than what mine is on a good day.

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Jeff May 5, 2009 at 10:12 pm

And… this is tonight… As much as I don’t want to – because at times, cable is smoking – we are sticking with DSL. The evening times are just terrible. Less than DSL. AND it costs twice as much.

So why wouldn’t we stick with DSL with at least gives us 5mb down for $35/mo? Instead of $60/mo for anywhere from 2.5 – 9 mb down? We seem to only see high speeds in the early a.m. and afternoon.

They are consistently slower in the evenings – presumably when others are hogging bandwidth.

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About

Notes from the Trail
The Personal Blog of Jeff Noble
Info: From the misty hills of Virginia, "Notes from the Trail" seeks to encourage you on your journey. Written by a graphic designer-pastor, this blog is a blend of humor, insight, and faith discovery.