Our Experiences with Cable and DSL

Our first foray into broadband internet was with DSL service from Qwest, our local telephone company. It did not go terribly well...We were told we were “near the limit” for qualification. The installation didn’t work the first time. Or the second. After several attempts to get it right, it finally “took”, at least for a while.

For the year plus we had it, it was always touch and go. The connection would regularly go down for hours at a time (only to miraculously come back up spontaneously!). About once every six weeks or so, it would go down long enough that we’d call customer “service”. After interminable holds, we were usually told that we needed to “reinstall the modem”, which typically took 20-30 minutes and NEVER solved the problem.

Finally, the DSL line went down and didn’t come back up, despite many calls to customer “service” and the rolling of several service trucks. So, we gave up and moved to cable...

What a difference! The AT&T Broadband (now Comcast) folks came out and the installation was flawless, the first time. Speeds are higher, and reliability is MUCH better. It has never required a call to customer service, and has only gone down temporarily a few times, and for short periods of time.

Needless to say, we’d recommend cable over DSL, any time. It’s faster, and more reliable.

A great resource for information (even for cable) is the dslreports site (now known as broadbandreports).