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| DSL is an acronym for “Digital Subscriber Line.” Get used to it. You’ll be hearing it more and more. The day will come in the not so distant future when you’ll be ordering ADSL for your home and SDSL for your office. Why? What’s the big deal with DSL?
DSL is the best innovation in Internet access since Earthlink started the “all you can eat” $20 a month unlimited Internet access mania four years ago. Why? DSL is the first low-cost, high-speed Internet connection to have widespread availability nationwide. Until DSL, local phone companies couldn’t provide a high-speed Internet connection using their existing infrastructure. A fast connection to the Internet was either a cable modem, which required cable service first, or a separate digital line or telephone circuit, which were too costly for the average consumer. DSL has changed that. In simple terms, DSL is a digital feature that runs over your existing copper telephone line. DSL’s frequency is much higher than the signal used for voice calls. Thus, you can be talking on the phone and using your DSL connection on the same phone line at the same time, and you wouldn’t even know it. DSL is a flat rate service like cable, and costs about the same. It uses a private phone line rather than a shared cable, providing guaranteed speed, and better security than cable. Unlike cable, you have a choice of Internet Service Providers to use for DSL Internet access. With cable, your only choice is the local cable company. As with all technologies, DSL has its limitations. The biggest limitation today is that it requires a phone line with a certain quality connection. If you have a poor quality connection, or are too far from the phone company’s central office to receive a good quality signal, you are not a candidate for DSL. Additionally, the phone company must equip the central office that services your area with DSL equipment for you to receive DSL. Pacific Bell and GTE have equipped the majority of Orange County for DSL services within the past year. The local phone companies offer a version of DSL called Asymmetrical DSL (ADSL). This is similar to a cable Internet connection in that your download speed is greater than your upload speed. ADSL is targeted at residential customers, since large files are commonly downloaded from the Internet, while primarily small files are uploaded. Northpoint, Covad, and Rhythms, who are the phone companies’ competitors, offer Symmetrical DSL (SDSL). SDSL offers the same speed in both directions. It is more costly than ADSL, but better suited to business applications, where large data transfers occur in both directions. There are other variations which will become more popular and expand DSL’s range in the coming years. Stay tuned, with Internet time being what it is, they’ll be here sooner than you‘d think. © Copyright 1999 April Josephson Find out if [DSL] is right for you! |
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