[sllug-members]: DSL in SLC

[twitchej at xmission.com]

Quoting Steve Dibb <steve at wonkabar.org>:

> I know this has come up a million times I'm sure, so I apologize, but 
> I've never seen these issues specifically addressed, so I'm just 
> gonna ask.
>
> I just moved to SLC, and right now I have Comcast cable for my 
> internet connection.  It works well, but it sort of "blinks" 
> sometimes for a few seconds about every ten minutes or so.  It can 
> get rather annoying when you're doing a lot of work remotely.
>
> Anyway, I'm looking at getting DSL, probably with Xmission.  These 
> are my big questions though:
>
> 1.  Do I have to get an account with Qwest?  If so, how do I get them 
> to provide *just DSL*, and no phone line, or any other bundled stuff. 
>  Is that possible?  If so, what's my total monthly bill going to be 
> from them?

I believe they have what they call "naked dsl" that is dsl without a 
phone line. I'm not sure what the costs would be. I use Qwest with 
xmission as my isp and have been quite satisfied with this combination.

> 2.  What are the speeds like?  I grew up with a 2400 baud modem and 
> BBS's so I'm familiar with kbps speeds, not megabit.  Right now I'm 
> averaging between 800K/s and 1.5 megabytes/second with Comcast.  I'm 
> not picky on speed though (as long as it's generally fast / stable).  
> It looks like Xmission offers "multi-megabit" whatever that is.

I signed up for the Multi-megabit, over the past 3 years have only had 
one outage during the day time hours. I generally get between 4-5 
megabits.

> 3.  Do I have to sign a contract?

I did not have to sign any contract with either xmission or qwest.

> 4.  How does that work with the modem?  Do you just rent one, or can 
> you buy one and save paying an eternal renter's fee?

I  purchased a cisco 678 when I signed up 5 years ago. Now I think they 
use the actiontec and actually you can buy these at BestBuy or CompUSA.

> Thanks guys!
>
> Steve
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