March 04, 2004
Phone Company or Cable Company--Lesser of Two Evils?
As you know from my recent entry, I have an opportunity to select a new broadband carrier in the next few weeks. I have been using the phone company's broadband service (DSL) here at Cincinnati (Cincinnati Bell's Zoomtown). Last year I upgraded my service to hyperspeed (3 Mbps download / 768 Kbps upload), and I haven't had any problems. However, I thought I should check out the cable broadband service this time. Looks like the cost would come out about the same (less than $5 difference per month) and therefore the cost is not an issue. So, it may come down to performance and service. I got my own Wireless router; so, I don't need to worry about that also.
So, folks out there, what's your opinion? Should I stay with the phone company, or should I switch over to cable?
Posted by Ken | Permalink | TrackBackDon't forget...you may have a third option pretty soon, as Cinergy is rolling out BPL to No. Kentucky in the near future (not super-near, but within a year maybe).
Posted by Craig at March 4, 2004 10:29 AMI'll still be living in Ohio. Although it sounds interesting, I'm not sure I want to be a guinea pig for new technology for my Internet service.
Posted by Ken at March 4, 2004 11:06 AMI would recommend cable, if only for the speed available. In Seattle (which I realize doesn't necessarily map to Ohio), I'm getting 3Gbps down and 240Kbps up.
Again, ymmv, etc. Check out www.broadbandreports.com for the latest in your area.
Posted by Noah at March 4, 2004 01:25 PMI use Roadrunner (cable) with a decent amount of success. Some periods of the day are a little more sluggish than others, but no major complaints. My wife works from home a decent amount and her company picks up the cost, so price isn't the driver for us. I'm also trying to talk my wife into eliminating our home phone service and moving to wireless only. Then, all we would have is a cable bill for TV and internet.
A few of my friends are on Zoomtown and one of them complains that their phone service sounds 'tinny' when they are not signed into the net. This was the big turn off for me, although I've never experienced it firsthand or remembered to test it when I've been at his house.
I'd be very interested to talk to one of the beta-testers for Cinergy's new offering. Also, I'm curious about something. Did they pick Hyde Park for the initial rollout because it is fairly affluent and may adopt broadband at a higher rate? Or, is there something about the technology that limits it to applications where homes are fairly densely packed? (Would it just as easily work in the suburbs where homes are more spread out?).
Posted by Aaron at March 4, 2004 01:55 PMI was an early adopter of Road Runner in Cinci and was disappointed. I switched to Zoomtown for about a year. Hearing that the bugs were worked out of RR, I switched back. I have had no regrets. Having used both for extended periods, the biggest differences have been these:
1) My Zoomtown Cisco 650 was not very robust. I would lose service quite a bit and have to power off the router several times to get an IP address.
2) It seemed the firewalling at Zoomtown was much more restrictive than RR. Some software (video conferencing mainly) just flat out would not work.
3) I did not have Zoomtown hyper speed so RR stomped the normal 768 kbps download in speed. On Zoomtown downloads I typically see about 2 Mbps sometimes creeping higher.
4) My IP address at RR goes for months without changing. At Zoomtown it changed all the time.
Posted by Mitch at March 5, 2004 09:17 AMI use DSL from a 3rd party provider and am quite happy with my choice. I prefer to support small local businesses whenever possible.
Posted by fiat lux at March 5, 2004 02:52 PMstay dsl. why share your bandwidth with others plus you can get static ip cheaper and better on dsl
or go T1!!
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