Daily Star: DSL is outdated technology
Every time I promise to myself not to make fun of the Daily Star anymore...yet every time it's just too tempting not to make fun of this newspaper. Take a look at today's article on the selling of the mobile phone companies. It describes the Minister of Telecom, Marwan Hamade, talking about the achievements of his ministry during the last year.
The last paragraph is a jewel:
"Expressing pride in work carried out by his ministry, Hamadeh said "all of the 11 lines concerning the work of the ministry mentioned in the ministerial statement have been fully implemented." He also emphasized this year's introduction of DSL internet service, an outdated technology that has been replaced in most advanced countries."
Uh-huh?! DSL is an outdated technology that has been replaced already just when Lebanon is rolling out this service? If true, why would the minister express pride in this?
The fact is that DSL is not an outdated technology and that it is far from being replaced in the most advanced countries. Whoever wrote this article had no clue what s/he was talking about.
Worse, the editor should have picked up on this illogical conclusion. Even if you have no idea what DSL is, how could you let slip by the statement that the minister is proud of introducing an outdated technology?
Anyway, for the truth on DSL in Lebanon, see my previous posts here and here.
4 comments:
the sentence structure isn't great, but the DS is poking fun at Hmadeh. He's happy to introduce DSL, but they're being sarcastic by noting that it is an outdated technology.
It was silly of them to say that it has been replaced, but nonetheless, in quite a few countries you have the option of getting DSL of something more advanced (with the option of paying more of course).
@m
Only thing is, DSL, or ADSL is not outdated and I don't know of any country that is replacing DSL with a newer technology.
They are in fact constantly developing, not replacing (!), DSL technique. The latest version is called ADSL2 and can handle up to 20MB per second. It's available in the Netherlands for roughly 25 Euro a month and does not have a download limit. If only that would be available for this price in Lebanon!
Sure, there are also experiments with fiber to the home (FTTH) to allow for even greater speed in the range of 100's of MB per second, but the technique is still DSL. It's just a matter of changing the copper wire with a much faster optic fiber.
Laughing at non-technicians on technical matters is an easy laugh. Maybe he just meant the transition from wire to fiber. How long ago is it that we enjoyed fantastic speeds of 56k6?
matter of perspective.
for example, you can note that the change from 1G to 10G ethernet over copper is just an update, but the reality is that the underlying algorithms and circuitry are quite different. the basis being used for the DSL in lebanon is extremely different from some of the later "versions." so no, the technique is not "still DSL," unless you mean that in the most generic sense. we may as well say that the technique is just equalization (because in the end that's what all the techniques do), and lump all wireline technologies under that category ...
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