What sort of internet should I get if I can't get broadband cable?

stav: they pay upwards of $1000 a month for service This is a typo, right? Missing a decimal?

I've used satellite broadband before, from the Utah desert. Transfer rates were very good, but as you say, the ping time was very noticeable. I think you've gotten mixed up though, because 2000ms is 2 seconds, not 20 seconds (and I would say that a page reload of 2 seconds is about right). Clearly there is absolutely no chance of you playing any real-time games over a satellite link. If you're in an area with no broadband, satellite is the best and only way to go. You get used to the slow ping times eventually anyway.

The next generation of satellite broadband will begin operation next year, led by http://www.wildblue.com/. It should be a lot cheaper than current satellite service, and they claim the new technologies will reduce latency to about a quarter-second. It won't be available until the second half of 2004, so there's still a wait.

Robert Cringely http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20010823.html an interesting column on what it would take to set up your own DSL service. I haven't tried it myself, but I love the idea. He makes the point that there's really nothing magic about DSL: you need to have a clean connection between the DSL modems at the endpoints, but other than that, you're just running over a normal pair of copper wires.

I thought most all of the eastern seaboard was fully wired for it by now I realize that Vermont is not technically the seaboard but my house doesn't even have 56k. I'm lucky if I can pull 44k through my phone lines and even when I do there is one [1] ISP with a local phone number who is also, you guessed it, the telco: Topsham Telephone Company. My dad has had Starband for a while now. It's fast [1 Mbit easy some days, usually 400-500k] and has its ups and downs. Downs range from not so bad -- high latency in the 200-400 ms range, only super problematic for gaming, but a bit maddening for shell access -- to the pretty bad -- service is down when it rains hard or snows hard. It's also pricey to install [usually about $400-500 or so] but the satellite folks are getting smarter and rolling the install cost into the first year of service so that you pay high prices [between $75-100/month] and then see a price *drop* after the first year. It's better than nothing and if you don't need internet all the time, it's good, but if you work from home or just have a monkey on your back, it can be problematic. He's got the cash to also have a back-up dial-up ISP just in case of rain but then it starts getting really pricey to the average human. My life in Vermont has really changed since I moved someplace with cable modem. It's not so crazy to make that something that is pretty much a qualification for buying a home. And, just to restate, I worked for Speakeasy for a year, just because you have a phone line does not mean you can get DSL. You have to have a DSL ready switching station within about three miles of your house. In citiers this is a cakewalk, but where I lived in VT the switching station was 16 miles away and wasn't even DSL ready when it was. More and more places are getting on the DSL bandwagon, but it's important to not go on promises of the ISPs ["oh yeah we'll have DSL in your area any day now"] and go with what is already available.

I live in NJ, still with dial-up, and I'm starting to wonder why I don't just have DSL. Verizon DSL is $35/month, and right now I have $15/month dial-up plus $8/month for the second phone line. Seems like the extra $144 a year would be worth it for five or six times the speed. The only other high-speed choice I have in my area is Optimum Online through Cablevision, which is $50/month or $45/month if you've got the $45/month cable service. With DSL at $35/month and DirectTV at about $30/month, I'm trying to figure out why my cable company actually has customers. I don't get why people keep saying DSL is so expensive... it seems much cheaper than Cable in all companies... is $35/month for DSL through Verizon too high? Too low?

I don't get why people keep saying DSL is so expensive... it seems much cheaper than Cable in all companies... is $35/month for DSL through Verizon too high? Too low? It's cheaper, but in my area, it's more expensive when you take into account the amount of bandwidth being used. My Mediacom cable connection is 1.5mbps down and 256kbps up, and I pay $55.95 a month for it. For the $55.00/mo plan from Qwest I could get 640kbps/640kbps. Also, that $55.00 does not include an ISP. For cheaper prices, you can get less bandwidth.

Oh, also, that 640kbps upstream on the Qwest DSL connection is "up to 640kbps".

it's important to not go on promises of the ISPs ["oh yeah we'll have DSL in your area any day now"] and go with what is already available. Sometimes this can backfire. Two months after I moved from one Detroit suburb to another in order to get cable Internet service (the cable provider in the first suburb had been saying "in about three months" for a year) -- they finally rolled it out. Aughhh! Of course, this was five years ago.