BellSouth’s DSL is the highest of regional Bells, but SBC is a bargain

By Bill Wolfe
bwolfe@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Oldham County resident Mary Jennings uses BellSouth’s FastAccess DSL Ultra, an always-on Internet connection that can download Web pages, pictures and hefty files quickly. But speed and convenience come at a price: $50 a month.

Across the river, in Sellersburg, Ind., David Duggins also surfs the Web, sends e-mail and downloads with blazing speed with his digital subscriber line from SBC Communications, the regional Bell company that serves Indiana and 12 other states.

His cost? Just $27 a month — only about $5 more than he had paid for his dial-up AOL service. When DSL became available in Sellersburg about eight months ago, «we switched over immediately,» Duggins said.

[ read more ]

Mahesh Uppal / New Delhi

The newly set up committee, headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, to oversee India’s progress in infrastructure, would do well to review the status of rural telecom infrastructure, which seems precariously close to failing.

India’s teledensity — the number of phone lines per 100 people — has seen an almost 10-fold growth in the past 10 years. The accompanying chart shows that out of India’s roughly 76.53 million phones, about 13 million are in rural areas.

Almost half of India’s phones are mobile. Growth in fixed phones is tapering off. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recently estimated that mobile phones cover 20 per cent of India. Roughly 14 per cent of the 6,07,491 villages in the country have no phones. A high percentage is out of order at any given time.

[ read more ]