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What about Price and Quality of Service?
There is more to discuss here besides
speed of
connections. Take price for one. Cable and DSL connections are both going to be more expensive than dial-up. But, DSL seems to be
cheaper of
two at
moment. You can get a good DSL internet connection for about $35 - $45 per month. Cable modem will cost you about $45 or $50 (this price may be included in a cable TV package). These prices, however, are really close and they change almost from month to month.
DSL is nice because you can talk on
phone and be online at
same time. In addition, business-level DSL service provides guaranteed data rates, so your connection speed is never a surprise. On
other hand, DSL speed tends to decrease
further you are away from
data center, and it is typically not as widely available as Cable. Cable speeds are not dependent on distance from
data center, and is occasionally cheaper than DSL when included in a cable TV rate. A cable modem, however, may require costly professional installation, and there may exists some limitations on downloads and uploads. All of these factors should be taken into consideration when choosing either broadband service.

Bradley James is a senior editor at SciNet.cc, a website containing many helpful consumer electronics review articles. For more information on dsl and cable technology, please visit our Cable vs DSL webpage.