If you can get DSL, go with it. We have SBC dsl at the office and it is a bit quicker than the TW cable I have at home. It has something to do with sharing the pipe with other people in your neighborhood with cable versus having a dedicated line to the phone co's office with dsl. With cable, the more people in your neighborhood that are online at the same time as you, the slower your link will be.
Hey now ....I actually have an office other than my home (although I only go in like 3 or 4 times a mo.).
SBC SUCKS (poor customer support, drops in service, and the list goes on). go with earthlink basically its time warner cable. they have a promo for $21.95 for first 3 months and $41.95 after that and you dont have to sign a 1 year contract.
I have SBC. I have had no drops in service and customer service has been adequate. SBC does me right.
My friend switched from SW Bell to Earthlink a little while ago. He swears that cable is much faster, for these two reasons: 1. TW/Earthlink have huge caching servers. So basically, if you want to download something, it probably is already cached and available locally. 2. If you do a traceroute out of your DSL, you will see that you have several local hops before you get on the Net. Each of these hops will slow you down. That being said, right now I use SW Bell and get about 150 Kb/s from good sources. That's pretty fast, but I'm leaning towards cable when I move into my new house based on the first two points and one more: I'm more PO'd at SW Bell for various reasons than the cable company.
SBC really ripped off a friend of mine, actually continues to rip her off. They sent extra expensive equiment for connections etc. and made it extremely difficult to return the stuff. They keep billing for the junk even though it was returned months ago.
I have had SBC for years and its CService does suck at times... I tried to switch to TW, but the cable guy said my office wasn't near the inlet from outside and he would have to put the cabel on the roof... Needless to say, I still have DSL...
My swb dsl is capped at 768... it all depends on how far you are from the DSL switch usually somewhere near your neighborhood. I'm pretty far from mine, resulting in slower speeds. I have a buddy who has TWC and it's faster than a T1 at times. It all depends on where you live...TWC is faster in my buddy's neighborhood cause alot of folks where he lives don't have computers... in the suburbs it would probably be slower cause most suburbanites have PCs... check with http://www.dslreports.com for TONS of info on broadband! you can even do a search for your zip code and it will give you the broadband breakdown in your area.... good luck.
I have SBC DSL, and to say the least, it sucks. There customer service is horrible, and the speed is a joke. I signed a year contract last May, and I assure you at that point I will be switching to Cable. My brother has roadrunner in the same area as me, and his average speed is around 1.7mb - 2.0mb. The average speed of my dsl is around 220kbps. In laymans terms - not good.
It seems that another good reason to get cable is that TW doesnt require a contract..I didnt have to sign one, and it only costs me 40 bucks a month(give or take a buck)
Harrisment, I was having very low speeds with SBC DSL, until I tweaked my system... go to http://www.dslreports.com and go to their tools section and tweak out your system. There are some internal settings you can change that could greatly improve your speed. They also have forums and a forum for SBC, check em out, you may double or triple your speeds. good luck.
but you do have to have cable TV already in place. I don't think you can get RoadRunner without having cable TV.
SBC level one Customer Service sucks. Your QoS depends on how far you are from the exchange. If it's good, it will always be good, but if you are far from the exchange point, expect speed fluctuation.
Drewdog, what side of town? Anyone have Alltel DSL? With any service, whether its phone, internet, blah blah, some people are going to have good or bad service. My experince with SWB was not good. But it doesn't mean you might not. My mom got ripped off from earthlink. The list could go on. I was always pro DSL, but It hink cable ahs the better deal. I gauge on two things: 1) What does the package offer (Cable modem gives me the modem and TV for 45 bucks ... can't beat that) 2) Contract. Cable doesn't have a contract (for me at least) I had excellent service with bellsouth and Charter. Whatever you do, steer clear of AOL. God they suck.
The only reasonable response you can get will probably regard their customer service. The lines vary from city to city so what's good in Austin may be pathetic in Houston. The same is true of cable modem service. Another factor to consider is the distance you are from your telco/DSLAM/switching station when buying DSL. Regarding the sharing of resources being a problem on cable modem network. This can be true, but it's not like it was when the service was originally rolled out. Besides, a dirty little secret that the telco's don't want to tell you is that once you're outside about 3 or so miles from your local switching station, DSL users are on a shared network, too... *gasp*. I've had DSL and it was reliable. I've had cable modem service and it's reliable. Generally speaking, cable modem service gives you the best bang for the buck in terms of speed/$.
