Huh, I seem to have started a minor flamewar here with my question. Sorry.

Anyway I'd like to say that most cable companies and ALL the phone cos
went all digital inside umpteen years ago for cost reasons. What some
people called 'switching' here is in fact packet switching. The whole
complete entire exception-less inner working of any modern phone switch
relies on the subscriber line being digitized immediately at the entry
into the switch. Only the ring and line voltage etc systems are analog
(DTMF is not analog anymore, it is handled by DSP algorythms in the switch
computers).

Therefore any phone company that charges any kind of extra for 'digital
service' is probably ripping someone off. All they really have to do is
route the voice packets into a different line interface (like a Redback as
you said). They could probably send the bits down the line directly and
achieve (almost) clean 64kbps (at least 56kbps) instead of A/D and modem
complications.

So DSL or ADSL or HDSL or whatnot is a patch to a patch to make some money
off the same old horse. And it does matter a lot what kind of server the
phone company has and what it is connected with. Also afaik there are more
restrictions on running a server (as in Linux) on DSL than on cable.

I think that cable (which is also digitally switched in most places) is
superior in capability and technology. I was somewhat surprised to see
people prefer DSL to cable anyway, but they must have their reasons.

Peter

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