ADSL and its alternatives?

[Patrick Cole]

Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 08:14:48PM +1000, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

> Forgive if you get some prices wrong. Feel free to correct me.
> 
> On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 07:05:20PM +1000, Paul Lawton wrote:
> > Guys and Gals,
> > 
> > A good friend of mine is considering getting ADSL connected to his home. He is weighing up the cost of this against 
> > the cost (dollars and waiting time) of a second telephone line.
> 
> > What are the benefits of ADSL? What are its drawbacks? Is IDSN an option?
> 
> ADSL:
> - Uses you existing phoneline, no need to install a new one
> - Can get nice 512k link all inclusive of 3G for under $100 per month
> 
> ISDN: (not sure of exact prices, but they're not far off)
> - Need to install ISDN line.   $57/month line rental
> - Onramp Xpress plan, 1 channel (64k): $104/month plan price + $165/month call charges
> - ISP to connect to: depends, can be $400/month permanent, depends where you go
> 
> Note that the ISDN here is based on a permanent connection, like the ADSL.
> If you're only connecting a few hours a month, there are substantially
> cheaper plans. Can also be under $100/month for around 50 hours.
> 
> But in bang for buck, imho, adsl comes out way ahead. ISDN does offer static
> IP. Not sure of the pricing for static IP for ADSL.

Onramp home highway (ISDN) is a lot cheaper than the "permanent" prices of the Xpress plan. And the Xpress plan limits you to one number you can call on the line for the capped flat rate.

With home highway the rental is equivalent to that of a normal phone line and effectively gives you a two channel ISDN line which in general you use one channel for your voice line and the other for data.

If you purchase a Data-over-Voice capable ISDN T/A or modem you can make local data calls for the same cost you would on your normal phone line provided you're calling a DoV capable ISP, except at 64k (or 128k with multilink if your ISP will let you do that). 

As far as ISPs that support DoV go, there arn't many. Webone seems to be the only one left that does unlimited time/download (http://www.traverse.com.au/Australia/html/act.html for a list of DoV capable ISPs in ACT).   Traverse also sell DoV capable ISDN modems that are guarunteed to work with linux.
 
As for pricing, look at stagnantpuddle.com, it's all there. Basically though it comes down to the monthly line rental (around $70 I think?) plus the local call costs if you're using DoV to a local ISP.

-- 
Patrick Cole - Debian Developer <ltd at debian.org>
             - John Curtin, ANU <Patrick.Cole at anu.edu.au>
             - Linear-G Network Solutions <z at linearg.com>
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