cable or wireless internet. which would you choose and why?

okay, here's my story.

I've been w/ my local Comcast service since day one and I've seen many ups and downs with my service. but the problem is, lately I've been seeing more downs (as in downtown) than I'd like to see so I've been checking into other broadband alternatives.

so I recently talked to one of my buddies who has a local, wireless high-speed service through one of the local companies in our area. the company offers several packages depending on what kind of bandwidth is needed. the one that I have my eye on is their 3MB down/1MB up for $65/month. my local Comcast service is 6MB down/384K up for $42.95/month.

so my question is, do you guys think that I should tell Comcast where to go and go w/ the wireless service and enjoy the much nicer upload pipe w/ them vs the much slower upload w/ Comcast? my buddy who uses the wireless service said that their uptime has been right at 95% and he also said that his ping rates are as good, if not better than when he was using Comcast.

so what do you guys think? go with the wireless setup and enjoy the higher pipeline with very, very good uptime or should I stick w/ Comcast and put up with all of their BS?

I'm not totaly up on my ISP uptime percentages and what's considered good... but at 95% your looking at an hour of downtime everyday... My cable hardly ever goes down, maybe for half an hour once a month, but thats becaue the cabling in my area sucks; is underground; and is getting old. Other than that the service is totaly solid.

Karlos said:

but at 95% your looking at an hour of downtime everyday...

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no, that isnt what my friend meant.

he meant that his wireless service hardly ever goes out but there are times in fact when it does go out briefly and by all means NOT on a daily basis.

unlike my freakin' Comcast service. when it goes out (here and there), it really goes out!

I know it'll be more expensive...but try keeping Comcast...but sign up for the wireless and give it a shot for a month or two. If you don't like it, flip your equipment back to Comcast and chalk up the setup fees you paid for the wireless as lost on an attempt.

I partner with a small ISP that offers Motorola Canopy wireless to businesses. It's pretty good and reliable. He's currently on a 40 meg DS3 pipe for it...as he adds more and more businesses...performance will degrade until he bumps up to a fatter pipe. But that's part of the economics of the smaller ISPs.

Is DSL not available?

YeOldeStonecat said:

Is DSL not available?

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yeah, I can get DSL but there are three things that are stopping me from thinking about that:

1) I live in a pretty old neigborhood for which most (if not all) of the homes are at least 30 years (or more) old meaning the condition of the copper phone lines underground cant be in the best shape for optimal DSL service.

2) my house is like 19K feet from the local phone company's CO which means that I wouldnt be getting the best possible speeds due to the large distance between my house and the CO. I would actually be running off of one of those DSL repeater thingys which I've heard arent too great either. (I dont remember exactly what those repeaters are called but I know it has something to do w/ being able to extend the standard 18K feet (or less) DSL range by a little bit more.)

3) the local DSL prices for anything even close to my cable speeds would easily peg the $80 to $100/month area which is simply too much in my book. they do have much cheaper packages but of course the speeds are also much slower in comparison to what I'm using now.

-I wish I could try out the wireless idea but the company has told me that its either a 1 or 2 year contract price. so once they come out and do the mandatory $200 installation, its pretty much a done deal w/o turning back.

My thoughts....to at least keep considering...

1) You can control that, every apartment and house I've lived in for quite a few years back...soon as I move in, since being online is important to me, I have the phone company run a brand new line in from the street...to where my office will be. It usually doesn't end up costing all that much, and hey...it rarely drops. It's WELL worth it to me.

2) 19k feet..yeah that's a bummer..however if you're located near a station, that can actually be great. A colleage of mine lives way out in the sticks...I think somewhere around 19k feet from the CO, however one of those stations is right down the road from him, just SBC Yahoo and he bangs out darned close to 3000/384 on benchmarks.

3) Total speed...depends what's important for you. I live at 14k from the CO, so I benchmark 760/350. But downloading speeds...I really don't give a hoot about. I online game a lot, and that's what important to me, so I use a quality DSL ISP (read...."Not SBC or Verizon..but a local small one that's about 80/month")..so my latency is fantastic, 24/7. But that's what works for me, that's where my priority is..a non-PPPoE DSL account (it's pure bridged ATM), I can do what I want with it (it's a business account, so if I want to run a server, or whatever, no violating the TOS) (as long as it's legal)