Broadband Internet: worth the switch?(Special Home Computing Section)(Cover Story)

Tens of millions of consumers now have broadband Internet service--DSL (digital subscriber line), cable-modem, or satellite connections that are always on and much faster than traditional 56k dial-up. If you're not one of them, what are you missing?

Plenty, judging by the response to a national survey we recently conducted of about 1,500 broadband and dial-up users. Broadband customers were four times as likely as dial-up users to be highly satisfied with their provider's speed and much more satisfied with technical support. Only 18 percent reported interrupted connections in the past month, compared with 55 percent for dial-up. Broadband users spent more time online, too, and were far more likely to download large files, watch video clips, and listen to Internet radio. Most had no intention of ending their broadband service anytime soon or of going back to dial-up.

To see how well broadband service holds its appeal over time, we checked in with two DSL users we'd interviewed two years ago. "To go back to dial-up service would be like switching from a hare to a tortoise," says Susan Buchsbaum, a resource center specialist from Stamford, Conn., who uses the speed to closely examine photos of merchandise when shopping online. She would stop shopping online if she had to go back to dial-up, she adds. Michael MacDonald, a database administrator from Aurora, Canada, still considers his DSL service a good deal, despite a recent price hike that brought his monthly fee to $45 from $40, because "the content is a lot better than two years ago and there is a lot more variety."

SOME ROUGH EDGES

Broadband has its shortcomings, our survey showed. Monthly fees for all types--typically about $40, compared with $20 for dial-up--are still on the rise. About 40 percent of cable-modem users, and nearly 25 percent of DSL users, experienced a price hike in the past six months. The typical increase for DSL was nearly $10 a month, compared with less than $5 for cable.

Why the increases? Mark Kersey, an industry analyst for ARS Inc., told us, "Prices are going up mostly because of less ...