Adaptive DSL may explain rapid service expansion

Last week on the blog, I suggested that people with Bellsouth telephone service check to see if DSL service was now available for their locations, even if they lived in rural areas where DSL had not been available before. The reason: when AT&T acquired Bellsouth, it agreed to make a more rapid "build out" of DSL service to rural areas. One of our readers in central Mississippi told us that he had suddenly been able to have a DSL line, and he was told by an installer that the AT&T-Bellsouth merger agreement was the reason for the service expansion to his home, which is 3 miles outside of Lexington, Miss.

It was surprising how quickly the service expanded in that area.

I posted an item on one of the ag forums this week, trying to see if anyone else had stumbled across new areas with DSL service.

Nobody commented specifically on availability in Bellsouth's old territory, but Ed Boysun with Boysun Grain, Inc. in Wolf Point, Montanta, said that DSL was expanding into more rural areas in eastern Montana, and he explained why he thought telephone companies now have a little more "reach" into rural areas with DSL service. Here is Ed's comment:

I'm just guessing here, but our rural TelCo made what they call 'Extended DSL' available over regular copper lines. I quizzed one of the techs about just what it was that seemed to have the magical properties of breaking the old 3 copper mile rule for DSL. He told me that they essentially replace the old line loads with something they call adaptive line-loads. If decent copper is already in place, and conditions are ideal, they are extending the service out to 14 miles. It's likely that that technology was used to make the faster service available to some that were previously out of range. As you near the fringes of the extended DSL, it does start to become flaky, though. A more realistic limit might be 10 copper miles.

Since then, a better alternative has emerged in our area. Feds have made a pile of dollars available to erect cell towers for what they call 'life-line' phone service. It makes basic cell service available to participants for $1/month. The co-op has decided to install wireless Internet service on these same towers. We're seeing near 1 meg speeds for DSL prices and with a bunch of new towers, we're talking a wide blanket of coverage for rural folks. Until we get glass buried to the premises, this wireless is the way to go for rural residents where we measure miles/customer instead of customers/mile.

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