Job Discussion Forums

[Turando]

Hi,

Is anyone else using DSL at the moment?

We finally got our DSL reconnected after 3 months of waiting.

Prices have gone down (finally!) on DSL as well compared to what they were last year. We are paying the same now for 256k as we were last year for 128K.

Dialup was slow and horrible (and painful after coming back from cable overseas). And because of the amount of internet we use our dialup bill was double what our DSL costs us.

And is the waiting list in the rest of Saudi Arabia for DSL as bad as it is here? In some areas it's upto 6 months.

[Stephen Jones]

The problem is they don't tell you how long the waiting list is.

According to STC I have DSL available at my number. But they need to install another loop. so I have to wait. Nobody knows how long. They said they would only contact me when it waa available. So far three to four months; I'll call again next week, after payday.

I don't find dial up too bad; I fire up firefox and then load all the 50-60 pages I am going to view in separate tabs, so in practice there is always something to read while the other stuff is downloading. But the cost is double that of DSL.

[usool]

Hi

I just got connected with my DSL. Whats the best deal going for 128K?

Regards and best wishes

[scot47]

We have ADSL.What is the difference netween DSL and ADSL ???????

[Turando]

Hi,

DSL and ADSL stand for the same thing as far as I know. We call it ADSL overseas but here they tend to say DSL. I don't think there is any technical differences. I could be wrong though.

usool: I'm not sure of the best deal but we use Awalnet for our DSL for about a year now and we've had no problems at all with them. The local guy that we get our internet cards off recommends it as well. 256K costs us 300 riyals a month and I believe 128K is 200 riyals. He did mention some of the others might have some issues sometimes and that Awalnet is one of the better ones. We've had zero problems so I'm happy with them even if it does cost about 10-20 riyals more than some of the others.

If you're going to be using it long term, it might be worth getting a 6 month or even 12 month card where you get a bit of a discount and a free month of service I think. I'm not sure of the details but you'll find it on the card itself it'll say it when you are buying them.

Hope that helps.

Stephen Jones: We got DSL after a waiting period of 3 months. This is after they disconnected it whilst we were overseas during the summer. We lodged a complaint and just kept bugging them all the time and they finally got it installed. The amount of different answers regarding when it would be installed was amazing though. One guy even told us that it would be next June (this was in October).

We needed DSL because we have a business back overseas and all our work is done online. So our dialup costs were enormous.

[Stephen Jones]

The A in ADSL stands for asynchronous. It refers to the fact that normally you have more bandwidth downstream than upstreams 256/128 for example.

If you have the same bandwidth downstream and upstream than it is not ADSL.

[scot47]

Isn't it ASSYMETRIC rather than ASYNCHRONOUS ?

I still don't know what it is all about !

[Stephen Jones]

OK, Mr. Smary Pants, caught me out.

Here's a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL

[Saudi4Ever]

If any of you make pc to phone international calls, is the clarity any better with dsl?

[substance]

I've currently got a 10mb connection here in the Uk (�35 per month), and I'm cringing at though that all be able to get is 256k tops when I get to KSA!

[jmsauer]

Does DSL really make much difference? It seems like the limiting factor isn't the connection rate to your provider, its the pipe into the country and the number of users online at one time. In theory I have a 56k connection, but when I download something from a site outside KSA the real dl rate is something like 2-3kps.

I can't imagine DSL is much of an improvement. Someone please tell me if I'm wrong.