Community webserver?

[Dave Parker]

I don't think that the lack of a T3 to the central office should be
a factor.  I have no idea what's at the central office here, but my 
line goes from my house to the central office to the ISP.  It's a 
dedicated connection.  As I understand it, it is just a straight 
through connection that is not processed by ANY of the local phone 
company's equipment, so what they have or don't have at the switch 
or central office (don't ask me to explain the difference - I thought 
it was confusing when I thought I KNEW what the difference was) is 
not a factor.  It's just a wire pair going straight from your 
location to your ISP, using the phone company's switch or central 
office as sort of a patch board to connect the wire path.  You can 
have a similar circuit installed for an alarm system, and if the 
alarm company wanted to start offering you DSL over that wire pair, 
they could probably do it with the right equipment.  It's more a 
factor of the condition of the line and not a factor of bandwith at 
the phone company's switch or central office.  Your ISP is where 
the bandwidth needs to be.

Because SWBell has said that they will not be offering DSL at your
location because they won't be running a T3 to that office implies
that they are talking about DSL service where they offer you not only
the wire but also the internet access.  You just need a wire to get
from your place to your ISP.  The phone company has those.  They're
not all in good enough condition to carry high speed traffic, but
all the locals have been laying tons of new cable in the local loop.
The availability of lines may vary from area to area, but if they can
put in a new phone line for you, then they can also install a line
that can potentially be used for DSL.  If they can install an ISDN
line, then I'll bet they can also install a wire pair that's clean
enough to carry SDSL.  My line only carries 272K each way (it's SDSL),
but my ISP can flip a switch on the DSL equipment at his end and bump
it to 512K each way.  They're just not offering that data rate yet.

Tony Hammitt wrote:
> 
> OK, so I'm in an area where SWBell has said that they will not be
> offering DSL because they will not be running a T3 to the local
> office.  Are you saying that all I have to do is claim that I'm
> a business (true) and they _have_ to upgrade their local office?
> 
> I don't really understand.
> 
> If something like this were the case, I'm already all set up with
> equipment, dual pIII box, 10/100 switch, battery backup, tape
> backup...  I just don't want to have to pay $2000/mo for a T1.
> 
> SWBell told me to go to hell when I asked about DSL.  I'm confused.
-- 
Dave Parker/DLP, Inc.    dlparker at dlpinc.com    www.dlpinc.com