Fast, Cheap Net Access? It's Possible

Even if you don't want to pay for broadband--or can't get it--there's hope.

"Once you've used it, you'll never go back!" "It's a whole new Internet!" "Staggering speed!" Are you as tired as I am of gushing clichés from broadband service providers and the endorsements of their speed-seduced subscribers? I find this especially rankling, because frankly, I don't need convincing. I'd love to be careening around the Web at 1.5 megabits a second. But neither cable Internet access nor DSL has yet found its way to my neck of the woods, and I don't want the expense or hassle of setting up a satellite connection. So I'm forced to keep plodding along--generally at around 36 kbps--until something faster shows up.

But most people aren't in the same predicament I am. About 70 percent of all U.S. households already have access to cable, DSL, or fixed wireless. But only about 13 percent of American households are actually using broadband. Why? Many dial-up users simply don't want to pay up to $60 a month to turbocharge their connection--at least not at home.

It's easy to see why some folks are holding back. After all, who's going to shell out $600 or more a year just to browse Amazon.com faster? If you use the Net at home primarily for sending and receiving e-mail, paying bills, and maybe checking the occasional movie listing, sticking with your trusty dial-up connection probably makes sense. But if you work from home at least once a week, send and receive file attachments regularly, or download streaming audio, video, or MP3s--or if you simply want to save time doing your online tasks--you need more bandwidth.

If you'd like a faster connection, but either you can't get one or you've decided it's not worth the extra dough, help is out there: Cheaper versions of broadband are available, as well as ways to boost the speed of dial-up browsing.

The Speed You Need

Most cable companies now offer what many DSL providers have for years: "tiered" pricing, which essentially charges you according to your connection speed--the faster the service, the more you pay (see "New Tiered Pricing Comes to Broadband").

AT&T Broadband, for example, offers three flavors of cable service (though not all are currently available in every market the company serves). The priciest of the three provides 3-mbps download speed for $83 a month, the standard service offers 1.5-mbps downloads for $46 a month, and the cheapest one has 75-kbps downloads for $27 a month--not much more than dial-up accounts. Coincidence?

Hardly. Sarah Eder, a spokesperson for AT&T Broadband, says that the company decided to offer its customers tiered pricing in an effort to entice dial-up users. "What we hope to see is customers trying cable at the low end, and then upgrading to the next level," Eder explains.

Other cable companies, including Adelphia and Cox, also offer tiered pricing plans. Similarly, DSL provider SBC offers no fewer than six different residential packages, ranging in price from $43 to $160 a month for download speeds from 384 kbps to 6 mbps.

How much speed is enough? It has a lot to do with the kind of Internet user you are. If you mostly browse information and shopping sites, and you just want faster-loading Web pages and the convenience of an always-on connection, cheap broadband is probably sufficient. If you use the Internet to access streamed music or video, you need a fatter pipe. And if you're constantly downloading--and more important, uploading--large files, you probably need to pay extra for a service that provides fast data transfer in both directions (many relatively inexpensive broadband accounts offer much faster download than upload speeds).

Considering taking the plunge for cheap broadband? Be sure to check the details of what sounds like a great deal: Increasingly, broadband service companies offer attractively low teaser rates for the first few months of service that may double after the initial period.

Tiered pricing may be great news if you're already wired, but what if you live in one of the little towns that broadband forgot? Until real broadband choices arrive, you can boost dial-up speed to near-DSL levels--in bursts, at least--using tools you probably have lying around the house already (or can download in less than half an hour).

Boosting Dial-Up

First, a few simple tips: If you subscribe to e-mail newsletters and news alerts, make sure that you receive the text versions, not bulky, slow HTML editions. You should also install a good ad-blocking application such as AdSubtract Pro to cut down on bandwidth-hogging clutter.

Still making too many trips to the coffeepot while your browser churns away? A slate of "browser boosters" from companies like Ascentive, Artera Group, and Propel promise to advance your dial-up connection to near-broadband levels. Most of these tools are affordable ($5 to $10 a month), easy to install, and at least somewhat effective.

These programs use many of the same tricks to speed browsing, such as routing your Internet connection through company servers and caching frequently visited sites, optimizing your connection settings, stripping out ads, and compressing graphics. I used Artera Group's Turbo for a while. I found the speed to be inconsistent; it was blazingly fast on some sites, but it was even slower than my regular dial-up connection on others. One of my colleagues, Senior Reporter Tom Spring, had better luck using these programs, and that difference is not particularly surprising--how much they help will depend on your system and what kind of browsing you do. (Head over to "Speed Up Your Dial-Up Connection" to read Tom's review.)

I admit it: I have an incurable case of broadband envy. As much as I'd love to snub my cable company for making me wait so long, I know that when it finally offers broadband Internet service in my area, I'll be one of the first to sign up. Until then, I'll keep trying some of the other dial-up-accelerating software. But I'll shuffle the cable company's bill to the bottom of the pile. If I have to wait, the company can wait, too.

Anne Kandra is a contributing editor for PC World. E-mail her at consumerwatch@pcworld.com. Select the link to read more Consumer Watch columns.