I had DSL briefly back in Fall '08 and upgraded to cable when a great deal from our local cable company (Allentown, Pa. area) came along. Oddly, ever since I moved the DSL to my relative's house across the street, she started having occasional issues with a temperamental modem. My cable service, though, has been working fine. 5 meg download vs. 1 meg for DSL. And the total price (TV, phone, internet) of the Triple Bundle we now have with our cable co. is about $1 more per month than we were paying previously for TV (cable company), Verizon phone and dial-up internet ! Not sure how it would compare to the Verizon TV/Phone/DSL bundle, but I imagine the prices are fairly identical. (The only draw-back for us is that the phone goes out when the cable does, so it's good we have cell phones for those situations -- which haven't happened yet.)

hexus, all that is REQUIRED for DSL on the modem side is voice grade wiring. Cat5 is required for the ethernet side, but between teh modem and NID you can use pretty much anything. most folks use cat5 because there is no sense in buying a couple different boxes of phone wire when cat works great for either. to the OP, unless you have inside wiring problems or are just moving the jack, changing out the wire won't make a difference. test by hooking your modem directly to teh jack outside in teh NID. if you don't see any improvement then any issues are on teh telco side.

OK In answer to the question that was actually asked: keeping the twists together isn't nearly as important for telephone use. Now, about colors... For 4-conductor telephone cable, line 1 is green/red, line 2 is black/yellow. For telecom cable with color-matched pairs, the primary colors (which are all we care about for 5 pairs or less) go blue, orange, green, brown, slate (gray). ie, line 1 is the blue/white pair, line 2 is the orange/white pair, line 3 is green/white, etc. If you ever use more than 5 pairs, those 5 colors repeat, but the stripe color changes. Red for pairs 6-10, Black for 11-15, Yellow for 16-20, and Violet for 21-25. SOOO, now that I've given you way more information than you wanted, here's a simplified answer: Yikes! This is some rough HTML! I definitely deserve a cookie for this one! Line 4 cdr telecom 1 GRN BLU/WHT RED WHT/BLU 2 BLK ORN/WHT YEL WHT/ORN

An electrician needs to do interior wiring. In most homes, the cable company only delivers to a central location (sometimes in the basement if there is one). At least that's how ours works. Then the TVs in various rooms need to have wiring to connect. At least now. It's a little complicated, though, because TV, internet and phone are on some systems. Others just have TV and internet. But not every computer in the house needs to work off a wired connection because the companies provide a wireless router to send the signal through the house. The success of that often varies with the house -- in our former apartment built in 1928 the signal would not work at all. Too much in the walls. Then there are satellite providers like Dish -- no idea what that requires in terms of wiring. Cordless phones and other bluetooth devices work wirelessly and the frequencies sometimes need to be adjusted so everything works together. The confusion results from the various providers and modes. F.ex. we formerly had 2 landlines in the house -- conventional wisdom being that those work best and in any emergency. But earlier this year we converted one of the landlines to Verizon wireless using a router. That service is 100% better, no buzzing or interference, it can survive a power outage by being connected to a backup generator outlet and no wiring is required at all plus it's half the price. Our cable provider OTOH was touting phone service as well but couldn't port our number. If there are alarm systems in the house there may be a landline requirement -- we need to keep one for that and to monitor our backup propane tank. It's confusing and a lot depends on where you live and what the various providers provide and what you need.