Good Internet Company in New Mexico

What is a good cable company in New Mexico? I only know of Cable and Quest. Does anyone know of any other internet service providers? What do you suggest?

Im trying to find a good internet provider, and im trying to stay under 30$ a month for it.

Comments? thanks in advance

 

That's pretty much all you have, unless you're willing to look at DSL or fiber. Internet competition in the US is a joke, so Good luck with whatever you choose.

 

hmm, okay, so what companies offer DSL? im not too familiar with that and im even less familiar with fiber..

 

ATT, Verizon (iirc), and perhaps whatever local phone companies are in your area (which may/may not be companies owned by the previously mentioned companies).

Cable internet uses the same wires that cable TV runs with, whereas DSL uses the phone lines (same way as dial-up, except DSL uses much higher frequencies than your telephone/dial-up), and fiber will either use a fiber-optic cable all the way to your house, or to the junction box in your neighborhood (or whatever sub-area you're in) and use cable from that to your house (this is common if there is already a bunch of fiber users in your area).

Basically, it boils down to this:

Cable has the advantage of high download/upload speeds, during certain times of the day. Your home connection connects to a local "hub" so to speak, where everyone else in your neighborhood connects to. The more neighbors that use cable, the harder it is to get full speed because everyone has to use the same bandwidth. What that means is that when everyone comes home after work and starts surfing the 'net and watching videos at the same time, your speeds drop. If you're using your connect during off-peak hours (say, 2am), you will have access to most, if not all, of the advertised speed.

DSL, unlike cable, is a dedicated line to your house from the NOC (network operations center), so you don't have the problems of sharing your bandwidth with your neighbors (even if everyone you know uses DSL). Disadvantage of DSL is that it's typically much slower than cable (cable is usually ~30Mbps down, whereas DSL is typically ~1.5Mbps down) for the same price. Another problem is that, unlike cable, your speed is affected by the distance from your house to the NOC (closer is better) and the quality of your phone lines (older neighborhoods will have outdated copper wire, though since you live in NM I don't think you have to worry much about this).

Fiber uses light signals to transfer data, which makes it the current fastest connection you can buy (iirc, Verizon sells a 100Mbps down connection as their top FiOS offering). It combines the speed advantage of cable, with the dedicated connection advantage of DSL (unless your ISP is using a junction box to share the fiber connection with your fiber-using neighbors). It's the best internet connection you can buy, but you will pay a pretty penny for it.

 

There is also hybrid cable... fiber backbone and coax to the house. I may have that since my cable speed is pretty steady. That or everyone around here has jumped to FIOS.

DSL suffers as distance approaches 18,000', over poor copper routes, and in bad weather.

GK

 

I've already mentioned that:

 

DSL Extreme aquired Quest a few years ago. If they are using there setup it might not be a bad deal. I have the 7.1 mbps download and 768 kbps upload setup from DSL Extreme. It actually runs between 6.5 to 7 mbps download and 768 kbps or better upload. No matter what time of day. I get around a 33 to 39 ping. The wii and two computers can play Netflix at the same time.

 

okay, awesome!

thanks to all, i learned a great deal that i didnt know.