Actual speeds depend on the amount of congestion on the Internet, however.
The upgrades have focused on the portion of the city once served by Pacific Bell's high-tech cable network, which Pac Bell abandoned and sold to TCI last year. The disadvantage for the cable-based service is that all the users in each neighborhood share the system's capacity, meaning they may experience more congestion and slower downloads during peak usage periods than consumers with digital subscriber lines. Both services are subject to congestion problems, however, so consumers will fare only as well as the networks are managed. The copyright laws prohibit any copying, redistributing, retransmitting, or repurposing of any copyright-protected material.