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Broadband Wars: Cable vs Phone Companies

Description: It's not much of a surprise that companies are starting to get very competitive when it comes to providing their customers with broadband services to rival all others. Two of the main culprits here are the cable companies and the phone companies.

There are lots of different ways to get broadband into your home nowadays, and depending on what you are looking for cable broadband and DSL (digital subscriber line) broadband that comes into your home via your phone line are probably the two best ways to get it.

They are certainly the two most popular ways to get online and start surfing at high speed, and even though it's possible that wireless broadband may eventually take over from these two methods, at the moment there is something of a battle raging between the cable companies and the phone companies, as they are vying for attention to get the lion's share of the customers.

So what does this mean for you, the person who is getting your broadband services from one source or the other?

Firstly it should be said that there is no major difference between cable broadband and that provided by the phone companies down your existing line, since they are both available to the majority of the population - with more areas being reached by cable all the time - and they both perform well in the reliability stakes. The one main advantage that receiving broadband via your phone line has is that you won't be sharing that line with anyone else, like you would be with cable. If everyone jumps on their cable connection at the same time, the service is likely to slow down because there is only a limited amount of bandwidth available to be shared out among the users.

The main advantage that cable and phone companies have when it comes to offering broadband services is that they offer other services as well - not surprisingly these include telephone and television services. This gives them the advantage of being able to offer bundled packages to those who are interested. It's a kind of ?buy one, get one at half price' kind of deal.

If you already have your telephone service through a particular company then you are most likely to get your internet through them as well, purely for convenience's sake. Other companies know this and therefore a price war is almost inevitable, since every company wants to snag as many customers as it can and make more money as a result.

In order to poach customers from other companies, they have to offer enticing deals with promises of a certain degree of service and the best speeds you can get, all for the lowest price they can manage.

Broadband wars might be a headache for the companies involved, but for the consumer they can only be good news, as they generally mean lower prices and far better services. The future looks good as these companies do more and more to make sure that they offer the best service around, and rely on new technology to help them achieve it.

All we have to do is wait for better prices.