Re: Question on "phone service" for lack of a better description...

In the UK you can get phone service from the cable TV company.  Seems to
work fine, but again - when a line is down the normal phone company is
much quicker in responding and repairing it than the cable TV company is
(NTL I believe was what my grandmother had, and I experienced that first
hand, even the difficulty of trying to call their support number at 11pm
on a Saturday night from a phone box down the street).  The cable
companies still to have the attitude "oh too bad, someone can't watch
their favourite TV show tonight, we'll fix it during regular business
hours tomorrow, or after the weekend", whereas phone companies have more
of a "the telephone is a lifeline for many people (especially elderly
people, my grandmother had an emergency pendant connected via phone to a
24 hour helpline service), and a way to call emergency services, we'll
send someone out at 3am in the morning to fix it if that's what's
required" atitude.

...Neil





Brad Jensen <brad@elstore.com>
Sent by: midrange-nontech-admin@midrange.com
2002/02/25 16:13
Please respond to midrange-nontech


        To:     midrange-nontech@midrange.com
        cc:
        Subject:        Re: Question on "phone service" for lack of a better 
description...




"Art Tostaine, Jr." wrote:
>
> DSL is better since you don't share, but it is often hard to get
installed, and many people (like in California) were shut off with
> less than a weeks notice because their carrier went out of business.
>
> Cable is a fine alternative for home users where DSL is not available.


Not in Tulsa. I have T-1 at work and cable at home. I have 25
employees. A number of them started on DSL and went to Cable,
they all love cable and would never consider going back to DSL.

'The DSL isn't shared' lie is a marketing lie. It is completely
untrue. All internet access is shared, that's why it's the
internet. Cable acccess is faster and more reliable, and the
fact that the signals are shared at the neighborhood level
rather than a mile away at the phone exchange means nothing.
Nada. Zip. What matters most, beyond the initial speed where
cable is far better, is the upstream bandwidth the service
provider has. So far in this area, it's cable by far.

And if the feds would remove the artificial barriers to home
phone service, you phone service would come over your cable
also, and be better quality and probably cheaper to boot.

Brad Jensen