Cable Beating DSL

Studies

from the I-go-with-the-winners... dept

For those of you who have been following my broadband problems, you’ll be happy to know that I’m now surfing rapidly again (for the moment at least), thanks to AT&T@Home. I fully expect that Excite@Home will have to shut down completely and I’ll be back to dialup again shortly. However, in the meantime, I’m thrilled. It also seems that I’m siding with the winning side of the broadband battle. It looks like cable modems are likely to beat out DSL in the long run. In 1996 I wrote a report saying that DSL would win because the cable industy didn’t realize the market they had the chance to get and it would be too costly to upgrade their network correctly. It seems I was wrong. Not that cable broadband access has been a huge success, but the cable companies certainly realized what they needed to do a lot faster than the phone companies. Yet another reason never to believe any prediction I might make. Random aside for those who want to hear about the amusing installation problems I always have with broadband providers. For about 20 minutes yesterday, I had two AT&T install technicians tracking cable around my house to try to find the main splitter. They started at my TV, and thought they followed it – until they came to an open cable lying on the floor behind a couch in another room. This was the point at which they suggested I hadn’t really been watching cable TV for the past few years, as it appeared my cable was attached to absolutely nothing. Top notch technicians, those installers.