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“Verizon or Charter? Is dsl or cable more practical for you? A side by side comparison reveals some startling truths.” |
Verizon compared to Charter - What is the difference? Which high speed internet providers extend coverage to my end of the neighborhood? How much will it cost me per month? Do I need to buy a modem, or do I need a router? Will the provider I select offer support for the browser I run? Do I need to sign a contract and if I decide to quit the contract, is there an early termination fee? I am tired of my slow dial up internet connection and I am trying to decide which broadband is best for me. To get connected to a broadband service appeared simple enough until I began asking questions. The answers I discovered muddied the waters even more. See, where I live all of the broadband types are available and that in itself presented a difficult challenge for me. I could choose wireless from ClearWire, dsl from Verizon, cable from Charter, or satellite speed internet from Hughesnet/ DirecWay. I had some home work to do. Why not? Does anyone ever take the first option made available in any situation? I usually don't and I hope you don't either. I like to say I keep my options open. However, in order to do that I first needed to know what options I had. I will just briefly mention satellite and wireless because they are available for me, but there were some negatives which made me decide they were not in the running. Satellite is too slow for the price. Like a cellular phone signal, wireless is too unreliable. I think it's just my distance from the wireless signal source. My only other viable options were between Verizon dsl and Charter Cable. Is there a big difference? In many ways, you bet there is a big difference. The most obvious differences is between dsl and cable. Let us compare them. With the Verizon dsl I would need a hard telephone line connection activated at my location. The Charter cable does not require the phone line. The cable is a shared connection, but the dsl is only shared up to the DSLAM where it splits off to each individual service account. So dsl is shared but not fully shared to the premise like a cable internet connection. This is really just a negative for the cable service at peak usage times for your neighborhood. At peak usage time the cable speed could slow down considerably. Another difference is that when you log on to the internet with cable, your ip address is static or remains constant. With dsl the ip address is dynamic, meaning each time you log on to the internet on dsl, the ip address will change. These are a few general differences between dsl service and cable internet service. However, as todays communication technology advances, there are other specific provider differences to look at closely. The following table lists and compares some major features of Verizon and Charter.
I can't stress enough that these were just a few general differences between Verizon and Charter. There are others I will list later. To bring a long story to a quicker end, I decided to subscribe to Charter high speed. Why? The deal breaker for me was simple: No contract, no early termination fees, and the price for new service was close to Verizon's, and Verizon did not offer fios cable in my area. They might in yours. To really cinch it for Charter was how my professional associates who deal with networking and internet telephony on a daily basis told me, "If you have options for both dsl and cable, choose cable. It's better. More reliable." So far after 4 years with Charter, I think so too.
Verizon DSL offers high-speed internet starting at $14.99/mo. for LIFE. Click here to see if service is available in your area. |
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