On verizon.com under the section DSL v. Cable they list as a feature
"Access your DSL from any room in your home with a phone jack." How
would this work? I have Cable now, but may switch down the road.

DSL is broadband service which uses your existing phone lines to work.
Because of that, you can use any phone wall jack in your house to take
advantage of DSL. You don't have to run any special lines from the
company to your house, or install any new wires or wall jacks in your
house. There is a caveat though. Every other phone jack which is in
your house other than the jack that the computer will use DSL on has
to have a special filter on it. If you choose to sign up with verizon,
they will ususally provide enough to cover all of your jacks.

skermit-ga

Thank you.

It should be noted that the DSL may cause slight interference with
phones on some lines. Personally, I have DSL and although was supplied
with the "special" jacks... do not use them, as there is no need. I
choice cable over DSL only because we often lose cable in storms,
never have I lost my phone line and I need my puter.

It should be noted that dsl is a high speed internet access not a
broadband connection. With broadband i.e cable you will recieve a
faster connection. And if you are wanting something that you can use
in the entire house you could always run a wireless network.

Several other issues can become problematic.  DSL and cable service
have a different service levels.  DSL is a broad term for Digital
Subscriber Loop and typically come in several combinations of speed.
Verizon provides DSL in several flavors based on the area of the
country that you live in. The most common is Asynchronous DSL or ADSL.
 The "Asynchronous" refers to the upload and download speeds
differing.  A typical ASDL service can have 384Kbps upload, and
768Kbps down.  DSL is also distance sensitive.  Again depending upon
your flavor of DSL, the limitation is 12,000 or 15,000 or 18,000 feet
of cable length.  There are some newer technologies that will extend
this length even further but it's fair to say, the further you are
from the central office, the less change you have of getting the full
bandwidth.  The long and short of this, check with you neighbors.
Anyone with DSL and lives/works in close proximity to your location
(house, apartment, business) is probably the best judge of this
service.  Ideally you could setup a "clean" laptop (for portability)
and connect to each type of service (clean - indicating a fresh OS
install without any programs loaded). This would give you a "best
case" test.  Barring these extreme measures, I would suggest taking
the the advice of the most computer saavy neighbors in the area and
have each benchmark their results to the same site at approximately
tthe same time.

I was a DSL user for several years and never had any major complaints.
 However, we recently did away with our home phones and instead now
have cell phones.  Because of this, I switched to cable internet
access.  I have a noticed a world of difference.  The cable is much
faster, more reliable, and for one reason or another, seems to work
better with my wireless router.  So, for whatever its worth, I would
choose cable.

My 2 cents,

While cable might have a download speed that is greater than DSL, you
rarely see the advantage. Many sites limit their upload speeds, so you
rarely maximize your bandwidth. You would have to be downloading from
many sites at the same time to really see the advantage of cable. I do
a lot of web surfing and downloading, and sometimes I do this while
playing online games like Wow and EQ2, and my DSL works great. Owning
cable is like owning a sports car that can reach 200mph...what's the
point? You can only go 65mph on the Freeway. (Soccer mom's with
minivans sometimes pass you up Mr. 200mph sports car owner.)

I believe very few people need speeds faster than DSL to justify the
additional cost of cable. Where I live, DSL is 26.99 while cable is
42.95. I also heard (not sure if this is true) that if everyone in
your neighboorhood has cable then at peak times, your download speed
is slower than DSL.

also the main item on the question is "can I use any phone jack?" this
depends on how you have your phone line filtered, if it is fiultered
at the nid (no filters on your phone jacks) this will not be possible
since only one jack in the house will have the dsl signal on it (not
really but its an easier concept to tell someone other than how the
filters really work) but you can get what they call a line combiner to
relive this.
if you have the phones/fax machines filtered your ok, just move the
modem around and your set.

but you can get a router or router/modem that can do that as well from
2wire http://www.2wire.com (look for hpna.. Home Phone Network
Adaptor) those things are nice.. very nice

mark8000, I don't think your question was properly answered. Let me
give you a full background on DSL and in turn answer your question
fully.

DSL is similar to regular dial up. Instead of your computer
comminicating on voice channels, 20-20khz frequencies, data exchange
is done on at higher frequencies, 1.1MHz. Think of it as being able to
watch number of different channels on cable, different frequencies on
the the same wire. Because of these high frequencies, you have to
install filters on phone jacks you use for regular telephone so that
there isn't static on you phones and inteference on higher frequencies
that would interfere with the DSL modem.

For your computer to communicate at those rates, it has to have a
separate modem, similar to your dial up or cable modem. A DSL modem is
usually provided free of charge by Verizon when you sign up for a
yearly contract, I belive.

Once you get the modem, you hook up your modem to your phone line.
Then you hook up your computer to your modem through a USB connection
or ethernet connection. This should all be familiar to you since you
have a cable connection.

Now, finally coming to your question. 

----With cable, you can only have your modem where there is a cable
jack on the wall. In my house, this is only in the living room.
Therefore, you would have to have your computer located in that room
or run a coaxial or ethernet cable to your computer.

----With DSL, you can have your modem everywhere there is a phone
jack, which is usually every room. If your comptuer room has a phone
jack, you can put the modem in that room and you would not need to run
any wires. And you could also talk on the phone from that phone jack
also.

That is what Verizon is referring to when they say "Access your DSL
from any room in your home with a phone jack."

I found what I believe you may be looking for on a presentation under
the 4th paragraph on the index page.
http://www.voipinternettelephone.com

I really enjoyed reading the question and answers concerning DSL vs
Cable. As someone looking to get High Speed Internet Connection, I
came across a site at http://BroadbandLifeStyle.com/ that compares 45
providers of Broadband Internet (DSL, Cable, Satellite and T1). Now
that I have become more informed on this technology, I'm able to make
a better decision once I compare the availability of broadband service
carriers in my area.

If you're a business, avoid both like the plague. DSL doesn't
match the speed of cable; cable generally won't provide "static"
IP's, usually they're "semi permanent" changing at a moments
notice.  Not good ... T1's are the connection of choice for business!  
If you're a business in
Michigan, you can find good connectivity at the Cheapest going prices
for T1's in Michigan at http://sales.msen.com/index.html?ga

Skermit you answered the question. Thanks. 

Neutron, thanks for the additional clarification. Now I know exactly
what Verizon means.

Thanks everyone else for the education! Very helpful. 

I would have responded sooner, but my credit card expired and I was
locked out until I got the new exp date to Google. Sorry.