I am always curious about other people's experiences so here is
mine for what it is worth.

     I started out with high speed internet service probably about
7 or 8 years ago.  Maybe even further back than that.  I tried
starting with DSL but my phone company didn't have that service in
my area so I called, what used to be home.com at that time,
because they handled cable service for the Denver area at that
time.  It was about 55 to 60 dollars a month.  home.com later was
bought out, after a big court battle, by ATT but eventually, and
only after a couple of years, they were bought out by the local TV
cable company which is comcast.  I always enjoyed my cable days
and rarely had a problem.  The customer repair service wasn't
anything to write home about, though, but nothing went wrong,
normally, so it generally wasn't a problem.  Then about a year
ago, or more, comcast put on a big push and you could get cable,
TV, and digital phone for a dad gum reasonable price.  Well, stuff
like that never lasts for ever and eventually they jacked all the
prices up and before too long, the 75 dollars a month we were
saving, was turned into a negative.  I didn't want to go to DSL,
since it was slower, even though they had it in our area now, but
there were some little things about digital phone that bothered me
once and awhile but everything else was fine.  We even went from 4
megs to 8 meg service but I swore, my hand on the Bible, my
internet connection slowed down both for email and the web when we
went to 8 megs.  It could have been updates they were doing and
things they were working on but it definitely was slower access.
Anyhow, we saved a few bucks going back to Qwest and got Direct TV
with the package, or bundle, from Qwest, DSL, and of course the
standard wire land line phone service.  The phone service, no
matter what digital comcast phone says, is better and especially
overseas and I do some overseas stuff.  The digital phone comcast
service has a lot of nice features but there are a couple of
things they don't have, convenience items I missed with landline
service, The TV stuff is, of course, the same, but the DSL is
nothing short of amazing.  Well, compared to all I did on cable.
Now I realize downloading huge files is going to be different over
all but I rarely do that anyhow.  The email and web access,
however, is just the same.  In fact, I honestly believe my email
connections are faster.  So I am assuming that comcast has a lot
more people on the cable line in this neighborhood than years ago
when I was probably the only one in miles around me on cable
internet years ago.  Anyhow, I have not run any tests of download
speeds, either before or after.  Streaming seems the same,
however.  I don't need to run some speed tests, although I am
curious up to a point, but the basic, every day activities, are
the same.  I felt a little sheepish going to Qwest, which is now
owned by MSN, you know, anti big business and all, but becoming
q.com changed my mind.  The shorter the better, at least I think
that's how it goes, or is it the longer the better?  I don't know.
I forget now at my age.  So, I thought I might report, for what it
is worth, on my experience to date.  I even checked into a
wireless company but they wanted 50 dollars a month for just two
computers.  Oh, by the way, the customer service from Qwest makes
comcast look ridiculous.  In fact, that's why we finally changed.
A couple of weeks ago, comcast jacked our services up so badly,
nobody knew what was going on, and they hosed up our phone
service, calling services, and internet connections and everybody
you talked to would tell us something different.  Qwest comes out
in 8 hours minimum.  Then again, I miss the old dial up days.
Scratch that.  I don't miss the dial up days, so I take that back.

Phil.
The Q\

K0NX
The Zenith Tube
www.RedWhiteAndBlue.org