4 ms·

This has always bothered me, why is DSL so bad in the USA? A part of that is due to thin twisted-pair phone wiring, which is 26AWG instead of 20AWG (0.8mm)[1]

This has always bothered me, why is DSL so bad in the USA? A part of that is due to thin twisted-pair phone wiring, which is 26AWG instead of 20AWG (0.8mm)[1] in parts of Europe, and presumably because the country is huge[2], but still, I get better service over DSL than cable (in Eastern Europe) because DSL is a dedicated connection from the CPE (modem) to the DSLAM (the central office equipment). Most of the congestion is on the last-mile network from the CO to the customer premises, so having a dedicated link provides a much more stable connection. DOCSIS works over CATV cable, which is a shared medium and it is not electrically isolated, so i.e. neighbors can create noise for you if they have badly designed or malfunctioning devices. VDSL2 35b supports up to 300/100 Mbps for local loops of 300m or less (984 feet), and 35b degrades gracefully to VDSL2 17a for up to 25/4 Mbps at 1300m (0.8 miles). So, in densely populated areas, xDSL would work much better than cable, for people who want a stable connection. Cable is oversold and can provide a small percent of the speed sold at any time, but usually 90% of the rated speed is available in off-peak intervals. Additionally, cable has higher ping times than xDSL and more complex CPE that must be controlled by the ISP (even if you buy your own, the CMTS will reprogram it with a configuration file on boot, and the ISP can open any backdoor they want). Compared to this, DSL CPE can be bought from anywhere and used on any network without ISP interference because DSL is a dedicated medium so there is no trusted part of CPE needed to limit the speed to the user, compared to cable where the CM must have a "trusted" part that the user can't control which will do access control, encryption and also QoS and speed limiting. [1] thinner wires have higher attenuation on high frequencies and/or longer distances [2] sparsely populated area usually means higher average local loop length

danaris 6y ago
Thank you for the very informative post. The best answer I can give to your opening question is "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." They absolutely do not want to upgrade their equipment, since at least the mid-'90s. For a while, Verizon was neglecting its copper in favour of fibre, at least in densely-populated areas (in sparsely-populated areas, it just neglected its copper in favour of nothing). Now, so far as I can tell, it has a deliberate strategy of abandoning copper to push people onto its wireless service, which has vastly higher margins and much less regulation (and different regulations, where it has them).
- milankragujevic 6y ago
  Yes, but that [1] is done elsewhere too, yet I do not see this problem. Just replacing the central office equipment is enough to improve speeds for a larger and larger percentage of users served by the DSLAM in the telephone exchange. The USA, being a technological superpower for decades, surely has enough resources to replace a few pieces of equipment in the CO and offer users something better. This is very strange because the new equipment can actually lower costs for the ISP because it is more efficient, easier to manage, more reliable and more compact. I do not have insight to understand the regulatory landscape and market conditions, however the more I think about it the less of a point I have. I think you are right about the answer [2], I keep trying to find technical excuses but can't. This is a sad thing really. Especially since it costs the same [3] to run the networks in .. [eastern european countries], USA, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia. No matter the diversity of terrain, the vast scale of the territory, the weather conditions, population density, there is an analogue to USA somewhere, and they don't have it that bad. [1] neglecting copper in favor of fiber [2] "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." [3] in general the maintenance and personnel costs may differ due to regulation and market conditions but the equipment costs the same everywhere, and where there is a higher market baseline cost for labor, the ISP can raise the price of services
jschwartzi 6y ago
As a counterpoint to that, Ziply just bought Frontier in my area and now owns all the DSL and FTTH service. They have the worst customer service I have ever experienced. They rolled through and canceled all the autopay, didn't tell us for three months, sent us a letter telling us we didn't have to do anything, and followed that up by sending us no bills or anything until the account was three months past due. Not a single person on their customer service team could refund a $30.00 late fee on an account that had previously been current for 5 years. On top of that when my fiancee was calling every CSR she would get on the phone with would offer to transfer her to the correct department, then hang up. She literally spent a total of 8 hours on the phone over the course of two weeks, so it ended up costing them way more money than they extracted from their little late fee. And their CEO had the unmitigated gall to say they have the best customer service on their website. In contrast, Comcast/Xfinity have not caused any problems at all for me over the 10+ years I've been a subscriber. Also Comcast was able to give us 300 megabit cable for less than the cost of 75 megabit fiber from Ziply. So it wasn't even comparable. So yeah, DSL/FTTH might be more technically capable, but it's only as strong as the company providing the service.
- milankragujevic 6y ago
  Yes, of course customer service is top priority, at least it should be. In my country, there are people intentionally staying on a cable ISP for their excellent support and the fact they carry non-government non-right-wing channels which are unwanted on other government-controlled ISPs (i.e. CNN affiliate). The cable ISP is slower and more expensive (up to 100% more) than FTTH at the government owned telco, but people really appreciate having problems fixed in a day after one call and not an agonizing process lasting months(!!) that often just ends with them cancelling your contract and waiving the early cancellation fee, and then blacklisting your location from getting service because it is problematic. Also funnily enough we had that same problem with billing, it lasted for 18 months, during which time no correct bills were sent, no payments were logged and nobody's service was shut off for non-payment. The ISP mostly forgave the debts [1] of all customers because they couldn't keep track of it. I first because a user just as it happened and haven't paid a year due to them messing up my discounted rate and then just telling me not to pay and sending a corrected bill for 1,00 RSD (basically free) because they can't guarrantee they will log the payment properly. Hilarious really. [1] and reported the biggest lost since 1980s when it was founded, but hey it's government owned, the people will eat the debt haha /s
gruez 6y ago
>Additionally, cable has higher ping times than xDSL Can you elaborate on this? Is it a difference of one millisecond, a few milliseconds, or tens of milliseconds? Is technical (eg. something baked into the DOCSIS standard), or an implementation thing?
- milankragujevic 6y ago
  5-20ms[1], if the DSL is set to Fast path (not Interleaved). The reason is simply because DOCSIS is working on a shared medium so in certain cases you have to wait for others to stop transmitting on your channel so you can transmit + there are much more unpredictable errors due to RF noise caused by having a lot of devices share a "single cable" (it's not REALLY single cable, it's split, but all noise will end up on the one feed to the CMTS) and also it's quite easy to get noise from neighbors. Noise is often hard to solve (find the source of it), i.e. it's a household with a bad set top box power supply sending low voltage AC into the cable network. Problems can be solved, and in some cities DOCSIS works very well, but often times it doesn't, and when it doesn't it's really difficult to fix it other than doing a node split (i.e. adding a new CMTS and moving half of the users to it) and proactively putting filters in everyone's house and controlling installations. [1] more on DOCSIS compared to DSL

danaris 6y ago

Thank you for the very informative post. The best answer I can give to your opening question is "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." They absolutely do not want to upgrade their equipment, since at least the mid-'90s. For a while, Verizon was neglecting its copper in favour of fibre, at least in densely-populated areas (in sparsely-populated areas, it just neglected its copper in favour of nothing). Now, so far as I can tell, it has a deliberate strategy of abandoning copper to push people onto its wireless service, which has vastly higher margins and much less regulation (and different regulations, where it has them).

milankragujevic 6y ago
Yes, but that [1] is done elsewhere too, yet I do not see this problem. Just replacing the central office equipment is enough to improve speeds for a larger and larger percentage of users served by the DSLAM in the telephone exchange. The USA, being a technological superpower for decades, surely has enough resources to replace a few pieces of equipment in the CO and offer users something better. This is very strange because the new equipment can actually lower costs for the ISP because it is more efficient, easier to manage, more reliable and more compact. I do not have insight to understand the regulatory landscape and market conditions, however the more I think about it the less of a point I have. I think you are right about the answer [2], I keep trying to find technical excuses but can't. This is a sad thing really. Especially since it costs the same [3] to run the networks in .. [eastern european countries], USA, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia. No matter the diversity of terrain, the vast scale of the territory, the weather conditions, population density, there is an analogue to USA somewhere, and they don't have it that bad. [1] neglecting copper in favor of fiber [2] "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." [3] in general the maintenance and personnel costs may differ due to regulation and market conditions but the equipment costs the same everywhere, and where there is a higher market baseline cost for labor, the ISP can raise the price of services

jschwartzi 6y ago

As a counterpoint to that, Ziply just bought Frontier in my area and now owns all the DSL and FTTH service. They have the worst customer service I have ever experienced. They rolled through and canceled all the autopay, didn't tell us for three months, sent us a letter telling us we didn't have to do anything, and followed that up by sending us no bills or anything until the account was three months past due. Not a single person on their customer service team could refund a $30.00 late fee on an account that had previously been current for 5 years. On top of that when my fiancee was calling every CSR she would get on the phone with would offer to transfer her to the correct department, then hang up. She literally spent a total of 8 hours on the phone over the course of two weeks, so it ended up costing them way more money than they extracted from their little late fee. And their CEO had the unmitigated gall to say they have the best customer service on their website. In contrast, Comcast/Xfinity have not caused any problems at all for me over the 10+ years I've been a subscriber. Also Comcast was able to give us 300 megabit cable for less than the cost of 75 megabit fiber from Ziply. So it wasn't even comparable. So yeah, DSL/FTTH might be more technically capable, but it's only as strong as the company providing the service.

milankragujevic 6y ago
Yes, of course customer service is top priority, at least it should be. In my country, there are people intentionally staying on a cable ISP for their excellent support and the fact they carry non-government non-right-wing channels which are unwanted on other government-controlled ISPs (i.e. CNN affiliate). The cable ISP is slower and more expensive (up to 100% more) than FTTH at the government owned telco, but people really appreciate having problems fixed in a day after one call and not an agonizing process lasting months(!!) that often just ends with them cancelling your contract and waiving the early cancellation fee, and then blacklisting your location from getting service because it is problematic. Also funnily enough we had that same problem with billing, it lasted for 18 months, during which time no correct bills were sent, no payments were logged and nobody's service was shut off for non-payment. The ISP mostly forgave the debts [1] of all customers because they couldn't keep track of it. I first because a user just as it happened and haven't paid a year due to them messing up my discounted rate and then just telling me not to pay and sending a corrected bill for 1,00 RSD (basically free) because they can't guarrantee they will log the payment properly. Hilarious really. [1] and reported the biggest lost since 1980s when it was founded, but hey it's government owned, the people will eat the debt haha /s

gruez 6y ago

>Additionally, cable has higher ping times than xDSL Can you elaborate on this? Is it a difference of one millisecond, a few milliseconds, or tens of milliseconds? Is technical (eg. something baked into the DOCSIS standard), or an implementation thing?

milankragujevic 6y ago
5-20ms[1], if the DSL is set to Fast path (not Interleaved). The reason is simply because DOCSIS is working on a shared medium so in certain cases you have to wait for others to stop transmitting on your channel so you can transmit + there are much more unpredictable errors due to RF noise caused by having a lot of devices share a "single cable" (it's not REALLY single cable, it's split, but all noise will end up on the one feed to the CMTS) and also it's quite easy to get noise from neighbors. Noise is often hard to solve (find the source of it), i.e. it's a household with a bad set top box power supply sending low voltage AC into the cable network. Problems can be solved, and in some cities DOCSIS works very well, but often times it doesn't, and when it doesn't it's really difficult to fix it other than doing a node split (i.e. adding a new CMTS and moving half of the users to it) and proactively putting filters in everyone's house and controlling installations. [1] more on DOCSIS compared to DSL