DSL versus Cable

The storm hit at about 3:00 am, Saturday morning nine days ago. It did a lot of damage, taking out eleven big trees along with electric power and cable. Power has been restored for seven days now. In fact the power company was heroic, thank you Xcel Energy! But cable is still out after nine days. Because we can receive broadcast TV signals this is no huge problem, of course, but what if we had cable for internet service?

We don't. We have DSL from the telephone company, whose lines are buried and much less susceptible to storm damage than cable. It did fail for a few hours, because DSL requires repeaters to get all the way from their office out to our home, and those repeaters require power from the power company. But that power was restored in a few hours, so DSL was back.

We have a generator which can support the water pump, heating, refrigeration, TV, and computers. Therefore, we had internet access during nearly all of the nine days, even before power was restored to our home.

But if we had cable for internet service, we would still be without internet after more than nine days. It's one thing to be without cable for TV, quite another to be without internet, especially since my business depends in part on internet access. Now that I think of it, what if we had telephone service from the cable company? Nine days without 911 or anything else.

Comcast says they are working on it. They say that every day when we call. Today they have "escalated" the problem and are "putting together a team." But they also said that it was already escalated, from previous calls that we had made.

Cable adapter laying on the ground: