I was reading the minutes of the last Prospect HOA meeting, and ran acroess the following:

''High speed Internet lines were discussed. It is still unknown if these lines are available through U.S. West. Commercial Application should be available through a private carrier. The City of Longmont and Adesta Communication are partners for the high-speed lines in Longmont. The City contact is Jeff Cook 303-774-4394.''

Here is what I have found out: Because of some pair gain equipment used on the phone lines to Prospect, U.S. West would not even consider offering me any kind of true DSL service. However, they said there was a possibility of getting an IDSL line installed. IDSL is not true DSL, but rather a glorified version of ISDN, but it does run fully digitally at 148K up and down, and is a dedicated line (that is, it's always up, no dialing required).

I then talked to a Pheonix DSL, which is a third party DSL provider. They were much more helpful than U.S. West (imagine that), and will be attempting to setup my house with either SDSL (208K up and down), or, if SDSL doesn't work, with IDSL. They are charging $50/month, with a free modem if you sign a 2 year contract. This price compares VERY favorably with U.S. West's prices for IDSL, but is a little more expensive than U.S. West's DSL price.

The reality about DSL (even IDSL) is that no one can really so *for sure* whether of not your home can get DSL until they come out and hook up the modem. Either the little green light goes on or doesn't. :-)

Still, it looks like Prospect residents have a good chance of at least getting IDSL at a good price.

If anyone is interested in high speed access and needs some advice or information, I'm somewhat experienced with the different options available, so feel free to email me at tom.evenson@jadesolutions.com with questions.

No DSL

If anyone is reading this, I'll keep you up to date on my continuing battle to get some kind of high speed access to my house:

The third-party DSL company that I attempted to get DSL service from reported to me that Qwest didn't not have and would not provide the necessary facilities for DSL, so I was out of luck.

Now, I'm trying to get U.S. West to put an ISDN line into my house, but they have been careful to not commit to providing the service untiul they come out and try to hook it up. ISDN is the least-favorable digital access that a person can get: It's 2 64Kbps digital phone lines (that can be bundled to a 128Kbps line with modem software) that costs about $110 a month. Compare this to DSL, which is anywhere from 256Kbps to 1.5Mbps, and costs about $20 to $50 dollars, or Cable modems, which weigh in somewhere about 2Mbps, and cost around $25 to $40, and ISDN isn't much bandwidth for your buck.

The good news is that Adesta looks like their building a GREAT fiber optic in Longmont, and will be offering ADSL services. You can goto http://www.adestacommunications.com/projects/utility/longmont.html. to see a bit about Adesta's Longmont project. I called the Adesta office, and they guessed that they would start providing service in June.

Rythms

Dear Tom,

Rythms

Dear Tom,I talked to Rythms Connections several months ago and they thought that they could serve Prospect. However if youn tell them residential instead of commercial use they immediatly can't do it because residential DSL rates versus commercial DSL rates are 60.00 or 120.00 respectively.The incentive is mainly on commercial service no matter what they tell you. Good Luck trying to get residential service but I don't think we will see it until Adesta hooks us up, which By the way I think might need voter support in this coming election. Sincerely Kiki Wallace