[ Warning: mini-rant follows ] On Fri, 31 May 2002, Rowland, Alan D wrote:

But you have Drew Carey!

And a very entertaining gentleman he is. Quite funny, in fact. Doesn't help our broadband situation. ;)

What about cable access? It's more and more an option that has, IMHO, significant benefits over DSL. No PPPoE for starters...

Bahahahaha. I understand from my partner, who used to work in the industry, that Cleveland was the last big US city to get cable TV. We're also probably the last to get cable Internet... Cablevision used to have a chokehold on the market, holding franchises for Cleveland (the old North Coast Cable) and most of the suburbs. But they knew as early as 1997-1998 that they were leaving Cleveland to focus on NYC, their home area, so they didn't do squat with their infrastructure; we couldn't even get them to add channels. Adelphia took over and now has broadband Internet access in parts of Cleveland. Parts. Not all; parts. Here in Lake County, it's Adelphia (former TCI) and AT&T Broadband (former Continental Cablevision/MediaOne). AT&T told me last spring that it'd be three months to get RoadRunner deployed, and then I met up with an installer at a local gas station, queried him and found out it'd be more like a year or two -- and that was *before* AT&T dropped @Home and RoadRunner in favor of their own service. Doesn't matter, I moved anyhow... here in M-O-L, Adelphia has the franchise, and Customer Service assures me that we'll have Powerlink (not to mention the channels I want... gimme Comedy Central and Food Network, dammit) when upgrades are completed in the fall. I sure hope so. I can't even sell myself DSL, fercryinoutloud. Rhythms used to be in M-O-L, but WCOM opted not to stay in my CO, probably due to economics; the M-O-L CO serves an area that is 95% residential, 4.5% wetlands and only about .5% businesses. I am stuck with Bell DSL. Until Adelphia launches Powerlink here, that is. Of course, the founding family just left Adelphia amidst a large to-do about... **drumroll...** accounting irregularities! I'm not convinced they'll stick around. Although, if they launched Internet access in M-O-L I'd still sign up and drop Ameritech DSL immediately... I think my last, best hope for broadband access is to launch the WiFi service that my colleagues and I are talking about doing. Supposedly, one of my friends has funding for this little venture. I won't get excited until I see some signed contracts... Oh. Did I mention that three small cities to the south and east of us -- Akron, Canton and Ashtabula -- have cablemodems? RoadRunner has been in the Akron/Canton Area for years already... -- Steve Sobol, CTO (Server Guru, Network Janitor and Head Geek) JustThe.net LLC, Mentor On The Lake, OH 888.480.4NET http://JustThe.net "In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user/You've got your own newsgroup: alt.total.loser" - "Weird Al" Yankovic, "It's All About the Pentiums"