Back in November of 1999, it was discovered that AM radio could cause interference and a speed hit in unshielded (read: all) Asynchronous DSL modems. Apparently the hastily-done designs could pick up noise from particularly strong AM broadcasts in your area, affecting a significant percetnage of modems. The story was posted to Slashdot and there was a considerable response.
Some people actually said that AM radio should be disbanded in favor of ADSL technology. Still others responded that the preceeding were idiots and AM radio has a much greater userbase and is actually licensed to be on the airspace. One such post I actually found to be rather profound:
AM radio signals may be causing interference, but they're the ones licensed to be
using the airspace. For crying out loud, what is going to be next? 'Basic laws of physics
are making my network go slow'? If the technology is succeptable to AM interference,
it is FLAWED, and the speed rating of the technology is dropped, and people have to
DEAL WITH IT. It's not as if the bandwidth is necessary anyway, there's no way
in hell ISPs are going to be able to handle hundreds of ADSL subscribers.. the
subscribers are the ones with the cheap hardware and lines, the technology is fast
but it sure as hell isn't stable (as demonstrated with this interference crap). The
providers are the ones who need to roll out the huge cable backbones and stable
systems. ISPs get a hell of a lot less bandwidth for their buck than subscribers. Not
to mention the poor bastards who run webservers who once could serve thousands
on their T3 connection, and now are paying for multiple DS3s to keep up. This
technology should NEVER have been adopted by ISPs, and anyone who tells me that
going higher than modem/ISDN for regular internet access was ever a good idea,
I consider to be the idiots who made the internet what it is right now... slow,
unreliable, and full of idiots with $25 a month cable pushing their entire CD
collections to each other. RIP ADSL.
I assume that, by now, the issue has long since been resolved. And certainly I personally enjoy having a broadband cable modem connection, but I can't help but think if maybe that guy did have a point.
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