DSL going down the tubes, customers driven to cable overall

As Q2 results are being reported from cable and phone companies, it’s easy to see a clear trend; customers are abandoning DSL lines for more expensive cable broadband connections.  Why the shift?  Cable companies say increased broadband usage through video and other bandwidth-intensive activities yield the need for faster connections that only cable companies can provide.  Personally, I thought DSL carried faster speeds, but I guess that’s not the case.

So far, 69% of the 476,000 total Q2 net broadband subscriber additions have gone to two cable companies; Comcast, and Cablevision, according to the Silicon Alley Insider.  Just 31% of which went to the five phone companies, representing a heavy blow to the major telcos.

The only saving grace for major phone companies like AT&T and Verizon is the increased subscriber base on their fiber-optic lines.  Verizon’s FiOS service, for example, is signing-up consumers as fast as they can lay their lines.  The push for new age fiber-optic networks stemmed from the dwindling customer-base in the first place. 

The only thing that doesn’t make sense to me is the fact that cable companies are believed to have faster speeds than DSL overall, and the word “significant” has even been used over and over when comparing the two.  In my mind, it’s always been the opposite.  Where I live, we have access to two separate cable companies and one central phone company that all offer high-speed.  Over the years, I’ve used each one, and most of the time, a combination of two or more.  DSL from the phone company has been by far the most reliable overall, and the fastest.  I can receive up to 15 MBPS with DSL, while the fastest the cable companies can offer is 10 MBPS.  Furthermore, the cable signal I receive is so diluted in my neighborhood that the fastest I can get on average is around 3 MBPS.  Since DSL is a “straight-to-home” connection, and not shared throughout the community, it’s always been “significantly” faster than cable in my experience.

• Virgin Media bringing 100 Mbps Internet connection to UK customers
• Verizon’s FiOS set to slam cable and satellite companies?
• United States has slow broadband Internet
• Hughes Net satellite broadband getting faster, but still only 5Mb
• Comcast – heading the way of the dinosaurs