The information superhighway is not a freeway

With more and more of us using our home computers to surf the web and send email, pictures, pay bills and watch TV, there has been an explosion in the demand for broadband Internet connections. The term “broadband connection” is used to define a variety of high speed connections to the Internet. The definition of “high speed” is somewhat arbitrary but basically refers to any connection other than a standard phone line and modem.

In ancient times, i.e. five years ago, most of us used phone lines and a simple modem for connecting to the Internet. A modem is a device that lets your computer “talk” to other computers. These old connections were limited to relatively low speeds because the telephone lines used were not designed to handle anything else. For example using my old telephone modem, it would have taken about 3 minutes to download from the Internet the complete text (no pictures) of the King James Version of the Bible. Today, with a standard broadband connection available from the phone company or your local cable company, that same text could be received in about 4 – 10 seconds.

While most of us don’t send and receive large documents rivaling the size of the Bible, we do send and receive files that are even larger. For example, one high quality photograph when converted to a computer file can be as large as or larger than the file containing the Bible. So sending Johnny’s birthday shots “over the river and through the woods to grandma’s house” via your computer will take a long time if you don’t have a broadband connection.

There is also a steep increase in the amount of video programming available via the Internet. For example my station, CET, has more than 400 programs available for watching on your computer on its service. Video is a ravenous consumer of Internet bandwidth and if you don’t have a broadband connection, forget about even trying to view live video.

For those of us in the Harrison area we have two choices of broadband suppliers. We can go with Cincinnati Bell and purchase ZoomTown® which uses a technology called DSL. (Don’t worry what DSL stands for) There are various levels of ZoomTown® available but most provide a minimum of 1.5 megabits per second, which will give you the Bible in about 5 seconds.

The other option is to contract with your cable company. Time Warner Cable offers RoadRunner®. This service uses the same connection that carries your Cable TV programming to your home. When you come down to it there is very little difference in the two offerings. Cincinnati Bell will tell you that they provide a dedicated circuit right to your house while with the cable company you are “sharing” a connection with your neighbors. Who cares? What is important is that it works, is affordable and gives you speed adequate for your needs. Both services do that. Both are similarly priced after you factor out the introductory discounts.