ADSL and the service cost equation

By the end of 2002, the DSL market was under duress in the U.S., as DirecTV, a subsidiary of the giant Hughes Corporation (itself owned by General Motors), announced in Dec. the discontinuation of its DIRECTV Broadband service within 60 to 90 days. The company, in a  press release, vowed to work to transition its roughly 160,000 customers to another (so far unnamed) provider.

Indeed, the list of defunct DSL providers is growing long in the U.S. Looking at the DirecTV Broadband lineage alone:

Phoenix Networks transferred DSL users to Telocity when it died. Several months later, Telocity also died, transferring users to Direct TV DSL -- which has now died, too, in the wake of a failed merger between Hughes and EchoStar, owner of the Dish Network.

In eastern Canada, Bell Canada has taken the dramatic step of applying bandwidth caps to some users' accounts -- a "fair access policy" not unlike the FAP implemented by some internet satellite service providers in the U.S.

Meanwhile, in Western Canada, Telus sent emails to customers of its Velocity ADSL service, advising them of an increase in monthly fees to $59.95. According to Telus, the increases affect business customers only and are being implemented to "improve the quality of service."

Others are trimming back the bandwidth of all their users, to reduce their raw bandwidth costs.

How Fast?

BellSouth (download/upload, average): 1280/220; Earthlink: 1050/128. Before it died, DirecTV/DSL delivered around 1500/128.

Another frequently cited complaint about Earthlink is its PPPoE-based service. To its credit, though, Earthlink offers static IP addresses for a small additional cost (US$15/mo over the standard service cost of $50/mo.)-- a necessity for some users.

DSLReports [dslreports.com] (forum) DirecTV DSL [directvdsl.com] (info for customers) Press Release [prnewswire.com] from Hughes (parent company of DirecTV)