Want DSL but "too far" from CO....

put on waiting list

[Acternaweb]

According to serveral ISPs I am too far away from a CO to get DSL, however they put me on a list to contact me when it becomes available. What is the chance of this happening?

Is there a way I can check to see where the CO is, even for education purpsoes?

Thanks,

[too much information]

That happened to the last company I worked for. They were located in the middle of downtown and were told they were not close enough to the fiber and it would cost them $5k to have the wire run just to get connected.

We ended up finding a third party phone company that was willing to do the work to get us hooked up as long as we used them for long distance, local phone service and internet. (Business DSL)

It may be that you just haven't found the company who is willing to work a little to get you as a customer.

[Corey Bryant]

Only when enough people need it. 3.5 miles is usually the maximum that DSL can go.

Have you checked to see if wireless is available or cable?

-Corey

[Conard]

The CO or central office refers to the telephone office of your local company.
Not the place where there is a large parking lot and lots of employees if you are rural. It could be a small 15 x 15 brick or block building on the side of the road.
If you go out and follow the telephone cable toward the nearest town (the one your listed in the phone book), you should see the cable get larger until it enters the building.

I would check with them to see if they offer DSL before any of the above. They are the ones that will rent the service to the other providers.

[MarkHutch]

I agree with Conard. I've had DSL at home for two years. Before that I had a Cable Modem. Both are wonderful for downloading. However, where I live I get a much faster upstream from DSL. Since I upload a bunch to our websites, the increased up speed is nice. Good luck. You're going to love it. :)

[Acternaweb]

Thanks for the info. There is a Ver* office down the street, but exceeds the 3.5 mile distance.

I looked at other vendors, but to no avail.

This is a newly constructed community, wouldn't it have benefited the phone company to lie pipes down?

I currently have cable, but Com* is using old lines from AT&T which lead to terrible connection speed.

[willybfriendly]

Just a gloat post.

I live in a very rural setting. Nearest town is a bit over 5 miles, and it only has a population of a little over 600. Nearest town over 50k pop is about 25 miles away.

Local phone cooperative is a happening thing. I just got fiber to my front door this year. No installation fees whatsoever.

Anyone want to move?

WBF

[Conard]

Acternaweb
You can check with all the providers in the world, but they still have to go through your local telco and the nearest office to your house.

It sometimes looks much worse that it is because there may be a satellite office less than a mile away.

Good Luck

[Farix]

wouldn't it have benefited the phone company to lie pipes down?

Not really. They normally lay down the cheapest line they can get away with. Verizon things, and probably justifiably so, that there is not enough residential consumers that will want DSL or pay for the expense to justify installing the lines and equipment needed for the service.

About a year ago, I called several ISPs to check on DSL service in my area. A couple of them stated that our local phone system's equipment still dated back to the 1950s and that Verizon had no plans to upgrading anytime soon as there weren't enough customers to justify it.

Unfortunately the same can be said for our cable system as well. There is a piece of equipment that is going bad at one of the offices, resulting in very bad reception on half of the channels, but the cable company can't seem to justify the expense of replacing it.

[Acternaweb]

What do you mean about a wireless provider?

Has anyone had experience with a dsl provider that does not require a phone line. Not sure if I can name the vendor, but if you google search for DSL you are sure to find it.

[rocknbil]

Acternaweb, willyb, same situation here. I live only 6 miles from a town where DSL, cable models, wireless, and T1/T3 are all available. In fact, I'm just about 1/2 mile from the Qwest "cutoff" line from most of those services.

High speed internet, pizza delivery, TV cable, all of it stops when you turn onto my road, it's like stepping into the Twilight Zone. :-)

The bottom line is they're not going to lay lines (here) until it's profitable. A developer has to put an apartment complex in our area before they'll run the lines. Frighteningly enough, they project that's going to be in about five years.

Though I'd never suggest it, the only viable option other than dialup (for us) was sattelite internet. You can get specials, but it costs between $400-$800 for the intitial setup and is $59/month. Ignore all their transfer numbers, that's a joke, the speed comes and goes with the number of users on it at any given time. There is a 3 second latency and while dowload speeds are decent, upload is horrible.

But it is better than dialup, I will say that.