The DSL Promise: Faster Internet Over Your Phone Line
Dial-up internet has a ceiling, and 22 million Americans just hit it. At 56 kilobits per second — the theoretical max of a V.90 modem — downloading a single MP3 takes about eight minutes. A software update? Go make a sandwich. Two sandwiches.
But the phone companies think they have a fix, and it doesn't require ripping up your street. It's called DSL — Digital Subscriber Line — and it runs over the same copper wires already plugged into your wall jack. The pitch is simple: broadband speeds without the cable company.
Who's Offering DSL Right Now?
The regional Bell companies are tripping over each other to get ADSL services launched this year. Here's what's on the table:
US West (serving 14 western states) rolled out its MegaBit service in select markets late last year and is expanding aggressively. Their residential tier offers up to 256kbps for around $40 per month, with a faster 1Mbps option for $50. You'll need to buy or lease a DSL modem — typically $150 to $200 for the hardware.
Bell Atlantic launched its Infospeed DSL service across parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Pricing starts at about $40/month for 640kbps downstream, with a premium tier at 7.1Mbps downstream for business customers willing to pay north of $100/month. The residential sweet spot is the 640kbps-to-1.5Mbps range.
GTE is pushing its DSL offering in Florida, California, and the Pacific Northwest. Their packages range from 384kbps to 1.5Mbps downstream, with pricing similar to the Bells — roughly $40 to $60 monthly depending on the speed tier.
Pac Bell, Ameritech, and SBC are also in various stages of rollout. If you live in a major metro area served by one of these carriers, there's a decent chance DSL is available or will be within the next six months.
What ADSL Actually Gets You
The "A" in ADSL stands for asymmetric, meaning your download speed is much faster than your upload speed. A typical residential ADSL connection in 1999 delivers 384kbps to 1.5Mbps downstream and 128kbps to 384kbps upstream.
To put those numbers in context: a 384kbps DSL connection is roughly seven times faster than a 56k modem. At 1.5Mbps, you're looking at nearly 27 times faster. That MP3 that took eight minutes on dial-up? Under a minute on a basic DSL line. Under 20 seconds on the faster tier.
More importantly, DSL is an always-on connection. No more dialing in, no more busy signals, no more getting kicked off when someone picks up the phone. You plug in the modem, and it's just there — like electricity or water. For anyone who's spent the last few years babysitting a dial-up connection, this alone might be worth the monthly fee.
And speaking of the phone — your DSL line and your voice calls share the same wire but use different frequencies. A small device called a splitter separates the signals, so you can talk and surf at the same time. No second phone line required.
The Catch: Distance Matters
Here's the part the marketing brochures gloss over. DSL performance degrades with distance. The farther your home is from the telephone company's central office (the CO), the slower your connection will be — and beyond a certain distance, DSL simply won't work.
The magic number is roughly 18,000 feet of wire, or about 3.4 miles. Within 5,000 feet of the CO, you'll get the fastest speeds your plan allows. Between 5,000 and 12,000 feet, expect some degradation. Past 15,000 feet, you might get a connection, but it could be painfully slow. And if you're in a rural area where the nearest CO is five miles away, DSL isn't an option — at least not yet.
This is a real limitation, and it means DSL availability is essentially a zip code lottery. Even within the same city, one neighborhood might get 1.5Mbps service while another a few miles out gets nothing.
How Does DSL Stack Up Against Cable?
Cable internet — offered through providers like Time Warner's Road Runner and the @Home network — is DSL's main competitor. Cable modems typically deliver 1 to 3Mbps, which is competitive with or faster than most DSL tiers. But cable has its own issues: bandwidth is shared among all the users on your local node, so speeds can drop during peak evening hours when everyone's online.
DSL, by contrast, gives you a dedicated line from your modem to the central office. Your neighbor's browsing habits don't affect your speed. The trade-off is that DSL's top-end speeds are generally lower than cable's, and availability is more limited.
For a more detailed breakdown of how DSL technology works, check out our guide to DSL internet connections.
Should You Sign Up?
If DSL is available at your address and you're currently on dial-up, the answer is almost certainly yes — provided you can stomach the $40 to $60 monthly fee on top of what you're already paying for phone service. The jump from 56k to even 384kbps transforms the internet from a patience exercise into something genuinely useful.
Web pages load in seconds instead of tens of seconds. Downloading files becomes practical rather than an overnight affair. Streaming audio from services like RealAudio actually works without constant buffering. And the always-on connection changes how you think about being online — you stop "going on the internet" and just start using it as a background utility.
The install process takes some patience. Most providers are scheduling one to four week waits for technician visits, and the phone companies are still working through provisioning backlogs. If your line needs conditioning or your CO doesn't have enough DSLAM ports, the wait could stretch longer.
The Bigger Picture
The FCC reported that by the end of 1998, roughly 1.4 million Americans had some form of broadband connection — cable, DSL, or otherwise. That's barely a rounding error against the tens of millions on dial-up. But the trajectory is clear. The phone companies are investing billions in DSLAM equipment and network upgrades. The cable companies are doing the same with their hybrid fiber-coaxial networks.
The next few years are going to be a land grab, and for consumers, competition between DSL and cable internet is the best thing that could happen. Prices will come down, speeds will go up, and availability will expand.
For now, if you see DSL on the menu in your area, grab it. Dial-up's days are numbered.