Getting on the Broadband Wagon

By Larry Magid
September 26, 2002

A recent survey from the U.S. Department of Commerce reports that most U.S. families live in an area where high-speed broadband Internet service is available, yet only 10 percent subscribe to it.

One reason, of course, is cost. Broadband typically costs between $39 and $50 a month compared with dial-up service, which ranges from $10 to $24. Another reason is that most people just don't see the need.

A high-speed broadband connection, such as a digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable modem, allows you to connect to the Internet at speeds ranging from eight to 35 times the speed of a dial-up modem. And, unlike having to connect to the Internet by telephone, a broadband connection is always on. With most services, as long as your computer is turned on, the Internet is there and ready to use.

Personally, I can't imagine life without my DSL service, and for my family, $49.95 is a small price to pay, considering how much we use it. I work at home and am online several hours a day. But there's another reason. It's possible for several people to use the connection at the same time. While I'm on the Net downloading the latest security fix for Windows, my wife might be using it to check her e-mail while my son is surfing the Web and my daughter -- when she's home from college -- is exchanging instant messages with friends. Try doing that with a single phone line and one AOL account!

To share a broadband account with multiple PC users, you will need network adapters (sometimes called Ethernet cards) on each machine as well as equipment -- such as a router or a residential gateway -- that allows multiple PCs or Macs to use the same Internet connection. All Macs and many PCs come with Ethernet cards. You can add one to a desktop PC for under $20 or to a laptop for about $50.

Setting up a network used to be a nightmare, but with Windows XP and Mac OS X, it's now relatively easy once you get the necessary hardware. A number of companies, including Linksys, D-link, 2Wire and SOHOware, offer routers for as little as $60. You can also get wireless (known as WiFi or 802.11b) systems starting at about $150 for the central adapter (called an access point) plus about $60 to $75 per machine.

But just knowing that you can link your computers to a broadband modem doesn't mean you need or want that speed. If you're just surfing the Web and sending e-mail, you may not notice that much of an improvement. Yes, surfing will be faster, but for many people, dial-up speeds are fast enough. The big win comes when you download lots of large files.

Broadband got a boost during Napster’s heyday, when millions of people downloaded music files that were typically about 4 megabytes per song. That came to an end after the music industry persuaded a federal court to prevent Napster from distributing copyrighted material. Plenty of Napster-like services remain, but the practice of unauthorized music downloads -- while still widespread -- has lost much of its luster.

Legal and moral issues aside, many of the current file-swapping services are hard to use and unreliable and many of the legal "authorized" services are too expensive, limited or restricted. Pressplay, for example, has a lot of music, but there are also a lot of restrictions as to what you can do with the music you download. The files you download have embedded "digital rights management," which limits what you can do with them. I signed up for what I thought was the $17.95-a-month "unlimited" service only to find out that I had to pay more money if I wanted to burn the songs I downloaded to an audio CD.

EMusic.com ($9.99 a month if you sign up for a year or $14.99 a month for a three-month subscription) doesn't place any restrictions on what you can do with the music, but it has a limited selection. 

"Movies on demand" is another justification for broadband that hasn't exactly materialized. There are several Web sites that allow you to download movies, but they vary greatly in what they offer and the quality of their offerings. AtomFilms (www.atomfilms.com) is an advertiser-supported site that has some great short subjects, but don't expect to find any Hollywood blockbusters. The quality of the video -- when viewed using a DSL or cable modem -- can be quite good as long as the movie is playing on a small (about 2 inches by 1 inch) window on your screen.

Intertainer (www.intertainer.com) does have some major Hollywood films online, including “Harry Potter,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “Rollerball,” but its selection is very limited. The company recently filed a lawsuit against AOL Time Warner, Vivendi Universal and Sony, claiming that the studios were conspiring to withhold the licensing of their films to Intertainer because the companies are about to launch their own Internet film service called Movielink. Ironically, Sony is an investor in Intertainer.

The service, which is available to anyone with a broadband connection, is actually pretty good. I used it to watch “The Russia House” with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, and I was pretty impressed by both the movie itself and the way it looked and sounded on my PC. Instead of a tiny window, the widescreen version of the film took up the entire width of my 18-inch LCD screen and looked almost as clear as if it were a VHS tape playing on a regular TV. True, it wasn't as good as a DVD, but it's getting close. There were some frustrations -- fast forwarding for example is very slow --  but these guys are doing a pretty good job, considering that this remains relatively new technology.

Speaking of movies, broadband is in a Catch-22. The potential of the technology is not likely to be fully realized until it becomes mainstream, but it's not likely to catch on big time until it starts delivering on that potential. Still, technology has a way of moving in fits and starts and then leapfrogging. I'm not sure when and how it will happen with broadband but it's going to happen eventually. High-speed, always-on Internet service is just too good to pass up.

 

Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, a division of Tribune Media Services