| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : OCTOBER 18, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| INDUSTRIES
Where to Find Warp Speed If you're wondering why you need a super-speedy, always-on connection to the Internet, consider the recent plight of Albert A. Paone. A year ago, the home-based day trader of stocks eyed subtle movements in Infoseek Corp. (SEEK) stock on his computer and prepared to sell the bulk of his 2,500 shares. But when Infoseek began a nosedive from its $80 mark, Paone's Internet service took just that moment to knock him off the Net. By the time he logged back in, the stock had dropped to $70--costing him tens of thousands of dollars. ''I needed a line that wasn't going to crap out on me,'' Paone fumes. That's why Paone became one of nearly 700,000 residential subscribers to high-speed broadband services in the U.S. this year. By 2003, that number is expected to soar to 14.7 million. So how do you move into the fast lane for Internet access? And which service is best for you? Today, consumers can choose from a handful of options: the telephone carriers' Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), cable modems, data satellite, and fixed wireless services. While each technology offers the same promise--a superfast, always-on link to the Net--they vary in speed, price, reliability, and availability. FEW CHOICES. First off, find out what choices you have. High-speed Net connections are not available everywhere. Big cities are the hot spots, and even there, competition only exists in certain neighborhoods. Paone, for example, first looked into cable modem service. While Tele-Communications Inc. (T) offered it, the broadband technology wasn't available on Paone's block. So he turned to DSL from GTE Corp. (GTE) Tom Gale of Portland, Me., settled on a cable modem because in his neighborhood, ''DSL was not an option,'' he says. In select markets, such as the San Francisco Bay area, consumers can opt for two flavors of wireless technology: fixed wireless gear--a broadband service piped via radio frequencies to a pizza-box-like receiver at home; or satellite systems from DirecTV and EchoStar Communications Corp. (DISH) that beam truckloads of data across the country to that dish on your roof. The trouble is, the satellite system is one way. So data going out--to a friend or the office--is pumped over a poky standard phone line. The bottom line: Neither fixed wireless nor satellite service is expected to compete heavily with DSL and cable modems. That leaves cable modems and DSL as the dominant choices. But each of these has its drawbacks. In most cable systems, a thick portion of the cable is set aside for files you want to zap across the Net. The rest is used for conventional television channels. If you are the only person using the system, you can download data at 30 megabits-per-second (mbps), a whopping 540 times faster than today's 56-kilobits-per-second modems. But in reality, cable lines are ''shared'' by as many as several hundred users. So during peak times--such as after dinner--download speeds can plummet to a disappointing 100 kbps. The most widely available alternative to cable modems is DSL. It uses the same wires that carry phone calls. These wires can't carry the bandwidth of cable, but most entry-level services today hit speeds of 384 kbps--nearly 10 times as fast as today's typical modems. ''I used to sit and wait for the pages,'' says Larry A. Feinberg, 46, a Bell Atlantic DSL user in Ardmore, Pa. ''I don't remember those days anymore.'' Hooking up these technologies can set you back as much as $300. For now, companies are promoting installation for $99, or even free. So nab some newfound Net speed. After all, nobody wants the World Wide Wait to be very long. By Roger O. Crockett in Chicago, with Andy Reinhardt in San Mateo _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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