8.12.04
Dry Pair ADSL, pointless
Let's face it. DSL is a poor man's T1. ADSL is an even poorer man's fractional T1. DSL has been advertised for years as the alternative to dial-up since it can be used over analog phone lines and not interfere with phone calls. Due to this, most ADSL providers require you to have, at the minimum, dial tone service on your line to even order telco provided DSL.
Well, lately there has been a strong push to have ADSL provided without it being bundled to dial tone service. What's the point? I don't know. If anything, I think it's fairly stupid to go this route. Why? You still have to pay for the physical copper line each month!
Prior reasons people had this desire is so they can keep their present ADSL service with one provider, then bundle local and long distance with another provider at a cheaper rate. Uh, if you can't afford all of the options you will likely NEVER use enough to justify the need of having them, then you don't need DSL.
The "new" push to unbundle ADSL service is due to the growth of Voice over IP service. This is getting all of your phone service over your broadband connection, usually under $30 a month. Riiiiight. Seems kind of like working for the "Department of Redundancy Department." You end up paying for the physical line, the VoIP service, AND the ADSL service. Hmmm, that adds up to around $65 a month. Where is the savings?
As in the previous example, are you really going to use all of those features? Call waiting I can see. Even long distance can be cheaper if you make a lot of LD calls. What if there's an Internet outage? Are those savings worth not having dial tone? Not really. I've even heard the "well I have a cell phone if I ever lost my phone service" argument. There's another added cost. Where's the savings?
12:42 pm in rants | 1 person viewing2 ramblings so far