Details - Service Plans

DSL has some great advantages, such as speeds up to 1.5 Mbps vs. the 56 Kbps maximum that a regular dial-up service service can acheive. Of course, as with dial-up, the closer you are to the telephone switch, the higher your connect speed and actual throughput will be.

It also has limitations. Some of which are mentioned in the next paragraph.

There are three conditions which must be met in order to subscribe to Riverside DSL, or ANY DSL, for that matter. First, you must have SBC as your telephone service provider. Second, you must be in an area whose central telephone office has a specialized telecommunitions switch called a DSLAM. Third, you must be within 16,000 ft (approximately 3 miles) of that central telephone office. You can be beyond the 3 mile limitation if SBC has installed a repeater to reach your area.

At this time, in Newaygo County, the ONLY area that meets these requirements is roughly a 3 mile radius circle, the center of which is the SBC Central Office in downtown Fremont. The Newaygo DSLAM is now operational, also. The coverage area is roughly a 3 mile radius cirlce with the center being the SBC Central Office in downtown Newaygo. We say roughly because the above mentioned 18,000 feet is measured as the telephones lines run and not by how the crow flies or how the roads run.

The cities of Grant and White Cloud are now scheduled to be operational April 30, 2004.

For those of you Riverside customers that are not in Newaygo County, the above conditions are exactly the same. If you are in an area that is serviced by SBC with a DSLAM installed and are within 16,000 feet of the central office, your phone line may be capable of supporting DSL. Larger cities have more areas that may be beyond the distance requirement, but do have above mentioned repeaters installed.

For more information on how DSL works,
click here.