DSL Anyone?

[Mr. Dude]

I know there are a lot of talented, smart people who vist this site.  Well, I stumbled across this article a while back and wondered about how hard it would be to actually accomplish this.  So maybe some of you fellow do it yourselfers could get some use out of this.....

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823.html

[Luxury]

interesting read.  I don't understand a lick of it, but sounds cool nonetheless.

[crashwg]

interesting read.  I don't understand a lick of it, but sounds cool nonetheless.

Ditto.

[Mr. Dude]

Yeah, I'm in that same boat.  I thought I'd post it here though in the event that someone might be able to explain it in words I can understand.

[DrewKaree]

Essentially it means you have to have access at some point to high speed internet, but once you have that, you can send it along to your house, work, backyard shed, Hole^TM (as seen in the BYOH thread) or whatever, IF you can buy a line from your local phone company.  

It DOES sound interesting, but there's WAAAAAY more work that will go into this than it looks, and someone, somewhere, STILL has to be paying for the internet service you'll be spreading around like Robin Hood (or just stealing to make your home connection fast).

[Brax]

If you could pull this off as easily as they're talking about it they would have done it by now and be freaking millionaires in the process.... and they sure as hell wouldn't be telling YOU about it.

[colopioneers]

As a former phone company employee....(damn ATT) , the problem is the "dry" phone lines.

Those went the way of the rotary phone a long time ago.

The closest you can get is an alarm line, which is still a digital trunk, even though it's riding on copper.  It has nothing to do with the wire.  It has everything to do with the type of the switch in the Central Office, which are no longer analog at all (although they can still transmit that signal).  The article also makes out the handoff from RBOC (Bell) to CLEC a piece of cake.  It's anything but that.  The industry went in the toilet because of that "handoff", and the way it was "handled".

Like Brax said, if you could do this, it would have been done.

Neat idea for rural areas, though!