Knock on wood...
My switch from Cable modem (service provided by Insight Communications) to DSL from SBC has been remarkably smooth so far. SBC was on time with their activation, the hardware they provided (a Siemens SpeedStream 4100) arrived well in advance of the activation date, and connecting and configuring the Speedstream was a snap. Once I had it up and running and confirmed that DSL was working, it was also a snap (a 10 minute job total - 5 minutes of which involved searching for the scrap of paper with my router address scrawled on it) to configure it to let my Buffalo AirStation Router do the login. A few quick checks on 2 of the 3 PCs that will use it show everything is working so far. The speed is already working fine at the advertised 1.5Mbs down, 384 up.
Why the switch?
1. Reliability: I hope the DSL uptime ends up being better than the cable performance. The cable just drops too often.
2. Cost. I'll be saving about $20 a month versus cable during the $14.95 a month intro offer for SBC.
The only hitch: I had to swing by Frye's today to pick up a different DSL filter for the home security system that plus into our phone lines. It uses an RJ31X jack, different than the standard RJ11 phone jack. Luckily Frye's had it so I didn't have to wait for delivery from an online store. That did set me back about $30, negating more than a month's savings on the cost diff. (Hint: if you are ever looking for this at Frye's, look by the home security cameras, not the the DSL devices and other DSL filters for RJ11.)
I've got a week or two to test the DSL to be sure it works better than cable before shutting down the cable account.
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