[CLUE-Tech] Qwest DSL Pricing Change

[Nate Duehr]

On Saturday 28 February 2004 03:29 pm, Collins Richey wrote:

> A little <ot>.  Some of us don't have the luxury of saving money with
> DSL.  I doubt that Qwest will ever update their equipment such that I
> can use DSL (Hampden & Tower area).  Sigh, so I'm stuck with Comcast
> cable which is good but expensive.

Define "expensive".  Cable download rates are much higher than most DSL 
circuits (for the same price range) but shared with "neighbors" at the 
head-end, and your upload rates are capped lower... but most cable customers 
have always had higher data rates for download -- so that all seems like it 
trades off.  

Whenever I've priced it, the two services came out to similar pricing for the 
same levels of service.

Or have cable rates gone up that much lately?  (I don't "feed the pig"... 
heh... as Dish Network would say... so I wouldn't know.  I've been a happy 
customer with Dish for almost as long as they've been around, and like 
supporting a Colorado-born company with my entertainment dollar.  They also 
seem to try to please their customers a lot harder than Comcast or AT&T did 
before them.)

Qwest still requires you to have a regular analog phone line as a 
*requirement* to have DSL service.  I find this stupid and annoying, but live 
with it.  It's certainly not a technical requirement.  But you have to factor 
it into the overall cost.  

I'd rather give Vonage and my cell phone company my regular telephone money, 
but can't justify both Vonage *and* a Qwest line.  No need for two.

Can you order Cable Internet from Comcast without basic cable service?  Just 
wondering -- never looked into that.

The only major difference I've seen between the two other than the above is: 

By using an alternate ISP on Qwest's DSL network, I have access to cheap 
additional static IP addresses, where that would be impossible to find 
(either an alternate ISP *or* cheap statics) on cable.  Choice is good.

Speaking of that, if the PUC already requires Qwest to open their DSL network 
to competing ISP's, why don't they require Comcast to do the same thing?  

Never figured that one out either.  Seems wrong, if they're both regulated 
utilities.  Cable should be a common-carrier pipeline for IP services just as 
much as Qwest's DSL copper and equipment are.

-- 
Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com