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Gel Caps (Column)

Beyond Free Internet

Faster. That's what DSL is all about, and it's coming to a home or office near you. Free dial-up Internet access - the "Free Internet" service launched in Egypt earlier this year - is excellent for most purposes. But for users who connect frequently or those who just want a faster connection, dial-up simply doesn't cut it.

Connecting by DSL - or Digital Subscriber Line - will give you download speeds of up to 512K at home and even faster at work. To put this in perspective, 512K will let you download nearly 10 times as fast as with dial-up connections.

Such speeds, of course, come at a cost. Most of Egypt's ISPs now offer subscriptions to DSL connections. For an entry-level, 256K home DSL, you can expect to pay a little less than £E 400 per month, while a higher-speed work line costs a tad more than double that. But in either case, you won't have to pay the per-minute telephone charges that you do with dial-up. So even if you stayed on line 24 hours a day, the cost would be constant.

At home, your DSL will piggy-back onto your existing phone line. A splitter enables you to use your phone and DSL at the same time, so there's no need to log off to make or receive calls. A business connection requires an extra copper line from Telecom Egypt, at a cost of £E 1,200 per year, plus installation fees. But business lines have a higher traffic priority, so if the load is high, business DSLs take precedence over home DSLs.

Users with a serious need for speed should note that most DSLs do not work symmetrically. In other words, they have higher download than upload speeds. This is fine for most uses, but if your company needs to host its own website or maintain in-house e-mail accounts, or if you need to do a lot of two-way file transfers, then a DSL is not the solution for you. In these cases, what you need is a leased line, which usually means even higher traffic priority and better reliability - as well as greater expense.

According to Khaled Bishara, CEO of Egypt's largest Internet service provider, LinkdotNet, a DSL is the best system for small businesses, heavy Internet users or speed-oriented people. "We know that DSL will take off," Bishara says. At this point, however, "the procedures of installing DSL still need some ironing out."

Moreover, DSL coverage inside Cairo, although extensive, is not yet complete. At present, Maadi and Nasr City are already thoroughly covered, while other districts have somewhat spotty DSL service. Ask an ISP for details.

A further word of caution, until the network is fully developed: if your home or office is located far from your centrale (telephone exchange), you might not be able to get speeds above 256K. That's still a significant edge over Free Internet's 56K or less, but not quite up to the system's potential. At least the ISP's recognize this, and if you subscribe for faster DSL service only to be constrained by your distance from the nearest centrale, they will only charge you for the level of service you actually receive.

Ehab Heikal
The writer was the founder of ISP Masrawy.com (since acquired by LinkdotNet), and worked until recently at LinkdotNet.

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