Currently in the market for getting Internet service there are five options namely: Wireless, Satellite, Cable, DSL, and Fiber. For the majority of the users there are two main options which are chosen and those are DSL, and Cable. With cable higher speeds are often offered but the speed are never guaranteed. DSL tends to be offered at lower speeds but with the speeds being more consistent for what is payed for. For example paying for a 20Mbps line in cable will most likely not get a 20Mbps connection on many of the websites. Now with DSL line speeds if you pay for a 1.5Mbps you should nearly always get that speed. I myself pay for a 5Mbps line and I always get that speed. If I had a choice between a 40Mbps DSL line and a 40Mbps cable line I’d always get the DSL line. The reason are the fact that if the Internet is down due to a phone line issue it is often but not always just one person’s line. With cable if the line stops working then the whole neighborhood is down.
Now with any Internet provider the service is always oversold at the trunk. The reason that the Internet is always oversold is that the cost of data on the main trunks. The main trunks are often fiber and those lines cost much more than the cable or dsl lines. In order to earn a profit the line is oversold. Now the key is to oversale at just the right rate such that the line doesn’t appear to be slow to the clients.
With cable the cable lines themselves are oversold too and if someone is doing P2P traffic then the whole line is slow. With DSL it is just my line that is slow if I choose to do P2P.
In the end quality is really up to you. With DSL I’m able to get static IP’s for much less than I’d be able to on cable and also I always get the speed that I’ve payed for. One the reasons that I don’t like cable as much is that I never know what speed I’m going to get.