[Cialug] DSL provider costs.

[Jim Cole]

You'll don't know me but here's my take. I'm moving into Nevada, IA from
Rhode Island in a week. I'm a full-time telecomuter who does the technical
implementations of medical software (MS SQL, Win2k3, Oracle, CentOS). I can
live anywhere in the country as long as it has high speed internet. Now, Why
do I want to move from the East Coast to Iowa? Family..my inlaws live in
Nevada and I'm a Minnesota boy.  It's time for the grandparents to spend
some time with the kids.

I was trying to pick my town and if I went to a smaller town (Radcliff or
Colo) then I'd get fiber to my house but still with only 1.5mbit/512Kb. I
need higher speeds. I tried talking them into something with higher but they
suggested a T1 :) Not in my price range.

Iowa Telecom quotes me a price of $380/month for 2MB/768Kb ADSL into my new
house. My company picks up the broadband charges but they'd have issues with
$380/month. I called the president of Iowa Telecom and left a message
explaining my issues with the costs. I currently pay $50 in Rhode Island for
a 5Mbit up/2Mbit down with a static IP.

The VP of Marketing called back and we had a chat. He agreed to lower the
2Mbit/768Kb rate to $60/month+$10/month for a static IP. That's what I'm
using now. Talking to a business sales rep for them they said they wouldn't
honor it for anyone else but my take on it is that you need to try something
like this. If they want your business then they have to be competitive with
the alternative(Mediacom).

I asked IowaTelecom why they weren't rolled out Fiber like the rest of the
lil telcos and they said that they were seeing WiFiMax as the future. One
tower vs running tons of fiber.

I was looking at Mediacom but I've heard the horror stories of overloaded
nodes and I didn't want to take a chance. Once I move I might get them for a
month or so and run constant speed tests, tracerts and ping plots to see how
she does. The 10Mb/1Mb package sounds interesting if you can get a stable
connection.

-Jim
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