Newton Ready! Thanks for your request.

[gaf at zk3.dec.com (Jerry Feldman)]

> so they finally got it to newton.
> 
> of course.  a month after I got my ISDN line.
Will Biedron, Director of Broadband Communications at Continental and Michael Ludas, Staff Director, General Business Market at NYNEX were the presentors at last Thursday's isig meeting. Both were very knowlegable about the technologies as well as what their respective companies are doing. I had been unaware that Continental offered their service in Newton. I was under the impression that Continental was only offering it in Weston and Wellesley. 

According to the brochures, the download speed is 1.5Mbps/second, with upline being 300Kbps. 

There were several people in the room who did ask some very direct questions, such as actual rates on ISDN with DOVB. (Data over Voice Bearer). If you order ISDN and specify DOVB, that bearer channel will be billed as if it were voice. For residential service, you would be charged usage based on your calling plan (eg. zone 1 with Metro service, no time charges). With good equipment and compression, ISDN may be a a viable tool for residential use, and there is a new tarriff that has been sent up to the Mass. DPU.

In my case, the $50.00/mo. cost for Continental is almost a wash. I can kill one phone line and one ISP. 

--------------
When I called Continental last Friday, they asked me when I would like them to install. I told them "next Friday". They had a few appointments available.

The Cable Modems (eg. LANCity) used by Continental support one IP address which is supplied to the system via DHCP over 10BaseT. I was unable to get one with AUI or BNC. Will told me to get a modem with AUI and an AUI/BNC connector, which Continental supplies. The installation people had a problem with that, and are sorting it out. They will supply and install an ethernet card. Right now, the cable modems only support 1 system. You can have multiple systems on your internal net, but only one can logically connect to the cable modem. They will have cable modems with multiple client capability in the near future. I hope to be a beta tester of this. They seem to be going slow so they can build up their infrastructure. They learned some lessons in Cambridge.
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+-------------------------------------------------------------+
Jerry Feldman            Digital Unix Development Environment
Digital Equipment Corp.  (work)gaf at zk3.dec.com (home)gaf at gis.net
110 Spitbrook Rd.        Mailstop: ZKO3-2/W17
Nashua, NH 03062-9987    (603)881-2970, DTN:381-2970
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