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Originally Posted by Tristan
No offence, but if the 256k upload is important to you guys, and you don't really care about download speeds, why not go for ADSL and save yourself a tenner (and more, soon) a month?
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Not all of us can get ADSL even in big cities with cable. If the physical route of the cable to the exchange (not direct "as the crow flies") is just that bit too long, BT say no. I know someone who's in this position where the exchange is something like 1km or 2km away, but the cable goes all over the place and is over 5km in length. Being a private road he can't get cable either.
Okay BT are extending the distances again, but in reality most people will get poor speeds way under the 512/256 unless they live well within the 3km limit (as people forget that for longer distances you get RADSL which means the rate adapts to the line quality and contention, so 512/256 is a mythical maximum to them. My parent's ADSL down in Devon gets around 450 downstream max on RADSL).
In my case I don't know if I can get ADSL, but I'm concerned about the antique looking overhead cable connecting to the house that's probably going to give me a heck of a lot of noise on the line. I'd then have to call BT to get a connection and as it's not a reconnection for me (never had BT in this house or the previous house), then it'll probably cost me a packet, plus I'd have to take time off work, and then I cancel the NTL phone, apply for ADSL and hope I get it. Thankfully now I can keep the cable modem whilst this is going on.
At the end of the day, it's a lot of hassle, although I nearly did it a year ago when my cable modem was up and down all the time for almost a year.
Oh, and one saving grace of NTL is their generous AUP which allows us to freely run servers. A lot of ADSL ISPs are more restrictive.