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How can Verizon advertise that their DSL is twice as fast as it use to be? Were they holding back on us to begin with? Your [2cents] please.

They probably updated their hardware and software to allow for faster speeds.

I see your point, but what there are actually saying is with our service you now have twice the bandwidth. It doesn't actually mean they've upgraded their equipment, just there allowing you to use it faster.

Bandwidth is basically how much information flows. If twice the information is transferred, then you have twice the bandwidth.

So does that mean the you can have faster speeds even with dial up?

No, the maximum physical speed is around 54 KBps even though modems are rated at 56 KBps. If you have 2 phone lines working in conjunction you can boost it to about 108 KBps.

Some companies say they get faster throughput by compressing the information before it is sent and uncompressing it on the other end. It takes time to compress/decompress information, so the savings isn't that great.

Spock wrote:No, the maximum physical speed is around 54 KBps

Of course this is the maximum, and is rarely the case (or never for me). This is due to other factors such as the quality of your phone line, distance to your exchange, noise and so on...