I live in the Sierra mountains... the nearest community is four miles past my home on what is essentially a dead end road. (It sort of continues through the National Forest) I live outside that community. The power and phone lines for that community literally run through my property. About a year ago SBC Yahoo started saying they were bringing DSL to the community 4 miles past me. (The center is 4 miles past me - the nearest border is much closer.) So when "DSL arrived" I stupidly assumed that I must be able to get it also. NOPE - no dice. So how the hell does DSL work then if they can run DSL through my property and give it to someone else - but not to me because I am outside the service area? They supposedly have been working on a roadside switchbox in the little community up the road - but that switchbox gets fed from lines which come through my property... what the heck? So do they have some booster or some such up there? Crap I am so TICKED OFF! I was COUNTING on getting DSL so my wife and I can work from home! Hell I am less than 4 miles back down the road - pipe it back to me!
Distance Limitations Precisely how much benefit you see will greatly depend on how far you are from the central office of the company providing the ADSL service. ADSL is a distance-sensitive technology: As the connection's length increases, the signal quality decreases and the connection speed goes down. The limit for ADSL service is 18,000 feet (5,460 meters), though for speed and quality of service reasons many ADSL providers place a lower limit on the distances for the service. At the extremes of the distance limits, ADSL customers may see speeds far below the promised maximums, while customers nearer the central office have faster connections and may see extremely high speeds in the future. ADSL technology can provide maximum downstream (Internet to customer) speeds of up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps) at a distance of about 6,000 feet (1,820 meters), and upstream speeds of up to 640 kilobits per second (Kbps). In practice, the best speeds widely offered today are 1.5 Mbps downstream, with upstream speeds varying between 64 and 640 Kbps.
SBC/ATT runs fiber to a CO (Central Office) or RT (Remote Terminal) near you. That's that box 4 miles down the road. That box has a finite number of ports for DSL subscribers. At 4 miles out, you are simply outside the service area. Even if you could get DSL, it would be slow and unreliable. And unless population density supports it, SBC/ATT is not going to put another box anywhere closer to you. You should probably look into satellite ISPs, like DirecWay or WildBlue.
I have DSL now but other than downloading huge files dial up seems fast enough for most internet things.Other than downloads maybe watching movies or videos on the internet would require broadband,What kind of connection speed do you have now with dial up?Other than damaged phone lines some of the newer dial up modems can be a bit funny.If you can't get fairly fast dial up connection maybe a change in modem or work on the setup you have would help.
Cali-Glock, what about cable TV? Can you get it in your area? If so, you might also be able to get cable internet. +1 on what SomeGuyInAHat wrote. Just because you have fiber going through your area, doesn't mean they will set up a new terminal near you unless there are enough people to make it economically viable. Oh, and I hate dialup. I waited for broadband for many years, and I will never give it up - unless I can live in a place like you do.
Thank you! At least that makes sense technologically. Any idea what the range of service is from the remote terminal? Intellectually I am satisfied, but emotionally I am crushed! So I guess I am SOL - there is nothing but national forest and a road running through it (which I live on) going to this small community of about 1200 (optimistic figure on the street post - no way that many folks really live there.) which I referred to in my first post. Where I am located in the mountains one looks "up" to view the southern horizon, thus satellite ISP, (or satellite TV) is not an option. Someday I may hire someone to survey the property and see if it might be plausible to get service if we put the dish a couple hundred feet up a tree - but that does not seem very practical - if it gets knocked out of whack or fills up with snow - I am not climbing up there to try to adjust it! No cable either. If I could get normal dial up even I would be thrilled, but where we are along the road me and my neighbors are lucky to get 14.4 connection speeds. Okay I am going to go hide in the closet, crawl into a fetal position and cry.
As stated above, range of service from the RT is 18,000 ft, or 3.41 miles. At that range, you might be able to get 300k dsl. Since you're at 4 miles (as the crow flies, wire distance would be considerably longer), forget about it. If your dial up is crap, don't expect much from DSL. It runs over the same pair of copper wires.
