As an economist I know likes to say: "It depends". To a varying extent (in some markets more than others), the massive oversubscription of cable that meant poor bandwidth/latency at peak times has declined to the point where the older arguments of "committed versus max" is less meaningful. Of course in some places it's still terrible, but not everywhere. Besides, distance and crappy phone lines can make a chump out of DSL as well. Also, let's be careful when we talk about the "typical user" and whether they "understand the difference". The "typical user" may simply not even care, even IF they know the difference. In fact, many that do know the difference may prefer (for whatever reason), to take the higher max of cable, especially if in their neighbourhood that max is achieved quite frequently. Further, who's to say that at some point the cable companies won't start offering minimum guaranteed bandwidth? I doubt they will, but if they were to, then a big advantage of DSL falls apart. Let's also not forget that many of us (myself included), choose not to procure landlines. This can be an extra $10-$30/month on top of the ISP charges. That's a big part of why I have cable at home, and I know others in the same situation. Sure, Oceanic/Earthlink here is worthless - took me 2 weeks to get an install time, and then the lead time on that is 3 weeks (1 week from this Saturday at this point..). But who cares? I'm using someone's open wifi. - bri Shane Owens wrote:
On this I am wondering what the user market would chose with an offer from a DSL provider of a guaranteed bandwidth purchase with a contention based cap on max speed. For example DSL sold with a guaranteed bandwidth availability of 256K (or 512K, 768K etc based on 256K increments) with a "up to" maximum of 7-10Mbps. Would the typical user understand the difference between this the standard Comcast marketing of "up to" speeds without any service guarantee?
Shane
It won't be long before the telco's respond by offering DSL at the same speed/price. I've heard (but don't *know*) that SBC is
selling 6 down and 1 up in >Houston and Dallas for $35.
We're doing a fair business selling accelerated dial up for $15. Its surprising how many folks don't want broadband. You don't need
4mb down to read
your email. And once you get outside of the city limits there's a good sized market that can't get any type of broadband,
especially cable.
We may decline some, but I don't think that ISP's are going away anytime soon.
Bob Martin
-- Brian Russo <brian@entropy.net> (808) 277 8623