Too many choices! So much fine print!

September 1, 2006 11:37 AM

Internet options for 3 apartment-dwelling college students in Seattle.

In a few weeks, I'm going to be moving into an apartment in Seattle's U-District (15th and 55th) with two other college students. We're trying to figure out what the best bet is going to be as far as Internet goes. We won't have a land line (the building is wired for it, of course, but we're all just using our cell phones) and we only plan on staying for a year (possibly more, but we don't want to get into a 3-year contract). Basically, I'm looking for the cheapest broadband option that won't be a pain to set up and/or maintain.

I've looked at this thread, which is sort of useful, but still doesn't really apply because we're not looking for phone or TV. I've also poked around DSL Reports a bit. And I know about the fabulous nocharge.com, which has sustained me through the summer, but I'm itchin' for some high-speed Internetting.

Do we want cable or DSL? How best to go about doing this? Any advice about broadband, especially in Seattle and the U-District, is appreciated.

posted by rossination to computers & internet (9 comments total)

What do you plan on using your net connection for?

Cable will typically give you better peak speeds for downloads. DSL will typically give you better upstream bandwidth.
posted by Good Brain at 11:43 AM on September 1, 2006

comcast. ~$50/month for 8mbps down.... at least on this otherside of the udistrict. they typically have a $35 special for the first 4 months or somesuch.
posted by mmdei at 11:47 AM on September 1, 2006

See if your local telco will offer dry DSL. Share that. Enjoy paying only a smaller fee for the line rather than paying for the telephone service with it.
posted by shepd at 11:52 AM on September 1, 2006

What do you plan on using your net connection for?

Basic net use, perhaps light torrenting. Definitely no big uploads. If I had to do that, I'd just use campus wifi.
posted by rossination at 11:58 AM on September 1, 2006

My cable company doesn't have a contract for internet so I can leave it anytime I want. The worst 24 months of my life was when I was tied to an SBC DSL deal.

My apartment and the neighborhood was relatively new, but the phone lines were "dirty" and SBC was never able to pump out more than 1.8Mb when I was paying for 3. They even tried taking all of the limits off for the at the time fasted 6mb service and it never got over 2Mb.

With cable I get 7Mb down for the price I was paying for 3Mb.

You might want to ask a new neighbor what they use. A guy asked me at the mailboxes the other day and he was happy to learn that the DSL service just doesn't work like the cable.
posted by birdherder at 12:04 PM on September 1, 2006

I'm luke-warm about SpeakEasy. There was a time when they had a shit-ton of features aimed at gamers, but they've really changed their target customer. They still have a Terms of Service that's better than most of the other ISPs, but the 1 year contract is a bummer, and I get periodic outages.

For just downloading, you'd probably be better served by Comcast, but if you're morally opposed to comcast (I won't litter this thread with that), and want a higher upstream, SpeakEasy is probably the most morally-upright DSL provider.
posted by hatsix at 12:07 PM on September 1, 2006

I'd be very surprised if there weren't three or four open 802.11b/g networks within range of any apartment in that block. Last time I wardrove the area there certainly were, anyway. Taking advantage of them would probably be wrong, though.
posted by hades at 2:04 PM on September 1, 2006

Too many choices? Whuh?

There's Qwest for DSL and Comcast for cable. You can get "naked" DSL through Qwest. You could choose another ISP with Qwest, but the best deal is to get the MSN bundle. An aside: if you have a Mac, don't let their "Macs aren't compatible" schtick fool you. It works fine.

DSL is definitely cheaper ($27/mo), but not as speedy as cable. Cable internet will run you about $60 unless you bundle it with a TV package, which it sounds like you're not interested in doing.

In my area (Fremont) Speakeasy was even more expensive than Comcast. So I never even considered it.

on preview: yeah, you're likely to find a free wireless signal you can mooch from
posted by O9scar at 2:22 PM on September 1, 2006

Last I checked, cable internet providers all had terrible terms of service. I'd be breaking the TOS on a regular basis just doing normal things. So I've never looked more closely than that at cable. Speakeasy's TOS, on the other hand, is quite reasonable.
posted by hattifattener at 6:18 PM on September 1, 2006