mulling my broadband options

Friday, May 16, 2003, at 05:17PM

By Eric Richardson

I'm going to be the only one in my apartment most of the summer, so I'm going to be dropping cable to save some money. Because of this, and a bit of hassle that would be associated with switching our comcast account from my old roomate's name to mine, I've been debating switching from Cable Internet to DSL. Today I priced out a bunch of different options, and they really just left me confused. Click the title to read more...

First off, it looks like cost would be very comparable. Comcast charges $56.95 for cable internet without cable tv (plus $3/mon for the cable modem). For DSL you have to add in the basic line charge (about $11/mon) plus the DSL charge ($35 - $59 per month, depending on who you go with). So cost isn't going to be too much of a determiner, and we have to look at other contibuting factors.

The first is that when people come back in the fall, they're probably going to want cable tv, and that would mean that cable internet prices would lower to $42/mon. So I don't know that I'd want to get stuck in a 1 year contract for DSL if that won't be the best in the long run. But then people are probably going to want a local phone line, too, so maybe that's a wash.

The second factor is speed. Cable is definitely faster, but it also seems less dependable. Maybe it's just me, but I've often felt that cable internet seemed to be just barely working... It would be speeding along, but at the same time if you looked at it wrong it would lose line sync. DSL just seems more guaranteed. I only have first-hand experience with cable, though.

I think I'm just going to have to ponder this one a little.