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Why Broadband is now Required for Internet Access

updated October 2008

    For those of you who may have purchased your first home PC in the late 1980s or early 1990s, telephone line modems may seem like a 15-20 year old technology whose era is nearing its end. However, the elite few who have dealt with telephone modems for the past 40 years have one of two reactions to to subject matter of this article: (1) "I don't want to let go of ol' reliable!" or (2) "Let's toss it."

    Before I go too much further, let's make sure everyone reading this is on the same page. First let's make sure everyone understands the definition of a modem.

    You might notice the fact that I specifically stated that the "telephone modem" technology is about 40 years old. This is because , as many of you might know, Cable Modems and DSL Modems now exist (and in abundance) in homes and offices of those using High Speed Internet connections, also known as Broadband.

    Right now, there are two main types of broadband, or high speed Internet connections: Cable, which is usually provided by your local Cable-TV provider, and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line), which is provided by your telephone company (or a separate company which leases access to the telephone lines to provide the service). Both can provide Internet access at speeds much higher than your average dial-up telephone modem could ever provide. Many of these services advertise speed up to 50-times faster than a dial-up modem.  I'll save the debate over which service is faster (DSL or Cable) for another date, but for now let's concentrate on moving everyone off of the old fashioned dial-up connections.

Here are the frequently asked questions from those switching from dial-up to high speed/broadband.

•     What's the difference? It's all connecting me to the Internet, right? Yes, it is connecting you, but there is a HUGE speed difference. The best example I could use is probably something like you in your car driving in a school zone versus the Space Shuttle passing you up at about 17,580 miles an hour. Yes, it's that big of a difference.

 (See the demo of High Speed vs. Dial-up from the Best Buy site. Enable "pop-ups" to view: Broadband vs. Dial-up Speed Demo)   

•     I spend enough time tying up the phone lines already when online... Another advantage of High speed Internet is that both service options (Cable and DSL) free up access to the phone lines for phone calls.

• But High Speed Internet costs so much more. I can't afford it. Most high speed Internet services are between $25 - $60 per month. For those of you who are paying for a separate phone line, as well as paying for an Internet dial-up service to use on that line, you are probably already paying the nearly same amount of money per month that a single phone line with high speed Internet would cost. Additionally, let's weigh in how much your time is worth. High speed Internet home users probably check their e-mail once or twice a day, taking only a few seconds, in most cases, to download 20-40 new mail messages. A dial-up user could spend 10 minutes to an hour downloading the same amount of e-mail.

• Do I still have to dial-up to sign onto the Internet? No, once connected you're essentially "always on". In other words, when you turn on your PC, you're already online.

•     I really like AOL, can I use it over a high speed connection? If you like AOL's "look and feel" you can continue to use it while using your high speed connection. You will still need to continue paying your AOL bill, as well as your high speed Internet provider. However, if you call AOL's customer service and let them know that you will no longer be using their dial-up service, they will usually cut the cost of the AOL service in (at least) half. Most AOL users now are opting out of paying for the service all together and using their AOL e-mail accounts directly from AOL.com over their high speed connection. This comes as AOL moves away from offering Internet Access services to content web based services.

• Are there any security issues about being online all the time? Due to the fact that you'll be connected all the time, you'll want to make sure that your Virus Scanner and Windows firewall is turned on and up to date at all times.  Windows Updates and Security patches are also very important. Doing these updates will actually be easier since downloads will finish much faster than over a dial-up telephone modem connection. In the past, since anti-virus updates would take so long to download, many people would delay the software from updating until a later date, instead of the software automatically downloading the updates on-demand. This would allow viruses to download before  the anti-virus software was updated to protect the PC from the newly recognized virus.

• What can I do on high speed that is near impossible on my current dial-up connection? Oh man, where can I start? Let's see: Watch movie previews, or "on demand" movies in high quality, Watch video feeds from news channels such as CNN or MSNBC, download songs in a seconds or whole albums in a few minutes, flip through web pages 40x faster (or faster), video chat with friends with web cams, talk on the phone while online, connect multiple PCs to a single Cable or DSL modem (via a router, wired or wireless) so that all may be online simultaneously... and let's not forget YouTube.

•     But why exactly are you saying that this is "Required" now? With all of the constant updates being released regularly for protection from viruses, worms, spyware, and hackers, the average modem user is left at a disadvantage when the time comes to download these updates and security patches. A modem user that has to wait an hour or more for a security patch is less likely to be protected from a newly released virus than a high speed Internet user that is able to download the patch in less than 30 seconds (most anti-virus scanners do this automatically while a user is online). In my opinion it is better to be prepared than ill-prepared.

If you have any further questions, feel free to e-mail me HERE.

---Steve