Cable lengths ahead of ADSL

BT Wholesale has cut £5 off its monthly charge to internet service providers (ISPs) for an ADSL line in the face of highly competitive offers from cable companies.

Each 500Kbit ADSL line now costs ISPs £30 per month ex VAT, a price on which they are expected to reap a profit. This compares with £25 a month inc VAT that Telewest and NTL charge end users for a cable line of the same speed. NTL charges just £19.99 if you buy your own cable modem costing around £180.

The cheaper cable prices are dependent on you buying into other cable services, like TV and phone. But for homes that already use these services there is no contest: cable broadband is far better value.

I have both Telewest's Blueyonder cable link as well as ADSL, and can report little between them in terms of service. ADSL has become a lot more reliable since its early hiccups, although BT Internet's mail servers have crashed a couple of times and we still get reports of installation problems.

Blueyonder has faltered a couple of times on boot-up, when it has to reconfigure itself, but that was sorted out after I reset the modem. In general it has been reliable, and installation involved a painless half-hour visit from an engineer.

Some cable customers have reported slowdowns when neighbours are on the line, as you have to share bandwidth on your local loop. I have not experienced this, which may simply mean that there are few users in my area. It is possible that broadband take-up is not yet high enough to assess the effect of contention on either technology.

Each has its quirks. On cable you have to report the MAC address of every new machine you stick on the line, although I am told some routers get round this. vnunet.com reported recently that it is possible to access your neighbours' machines if they have file sharing switched on, just as on any local network, but I have failed to see any on my loop.

A personal firewall would get round this problem, but cable companies leave this level of security to users. I have the opposite problem with my business-class ADSL link, which uses Network Address Translation; this makes it difficult for hackers to find a way in but can also confuse useful services such as messaging.

Businesses, which are less price sensitive, may go for ADSL because BT resellers are more geared up for them; moreover, on crowded lines when contention does become an issue, ADSL bandwidth is likely to be more stable.

But cable companies are increasingly targeting businesses. As we reported exclusively last month, BT Wholesale is to introduce self-installation and open up the market in access boxes in a bid to cut prices and boost take-up. It is also ramping up the services it offers businesses.

This is just as well, because ADSL is more widely available than cable. It also means that the competition from cable is benefiting even those who have no choice in the matter.

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