On Wednesday, January 14, 2004 4:41 PM NZT,
Chris Day <chris.day@dse.co.nz> wrote:

> The type of modem you install will most probably have very little to
do
> with improving your ability to get ADSL. The problem is the actual
phone
> line length and the technology - ADSL theoretically maxs out at 5km -
as
> you have seen.

That's pretty much what I thought.

But apparently not all modems are created equal - there was an article
in the Herald a week or two back which described how some retailer had
been burned by assuming all Telepermitted DSL modems were capable to the
same distance, then found that the ones he was selling only worked to
about 3km.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3540743&thesection=bu
siness&thesubsection=technology&thesecondsubsection=information

So I'm guessing that different modem chipsets/whatever have more or less
tolerance for line quality.

> Apart from Telecom improving the quality or their lines between your
> premises and their exchange, the only other thing you could look at is

Yeah and we all know what the chances are of Telecom improving the lines
;)

> your internal house wiring. Often, homes were wired with simple
twisted
> pair which is not designed for transferring high speed data. You may
get
> a performance increase if you replace this twisted pair stuff with Cat
5
>

I should note the house is only 4 years old - it was newly built when I
first tried to get DSL - so I would expect the internal wiring to be
decent enough.

One thing I should probably add. When I was doing this four years ago,
somebody from Telecom (from this list in fact) contacted me and did some
sort of a test on the line and found there were "loading coils", which,
he said, would prevent DSL from working. Anybody know what that means?

-Simon

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