Free wireless broadband is starting to be offered here in town, but you definitely won’t get the same speed as if you where connected to Verizon internet service. Not where I live, of course, but it’s there in the downtown areas. I was on the phone with a friend who was visiting from out of town. He asked me where he could connect to someone’s broadband wireless. Just then he looked down and saw the sign pained on the pavement “wireless, town of Chapel Hill.” I like this idea on the surface, but I always have to wonder about unintended side effects.

First, if cities providing free internet catches on, how will this effect the Broadband industry? It could decrease subscriptions. I wonder if this will affect cafes and coffee shops that offer wireless internet. As a far out idea, will we start seeing lots of homeless people toting laptops to get the free internet? People basically throw away laptops once they are a couple years old so it could happen! Finally, I know it’s not really free. Nothing, not even bandwidth, is really free. Someone pays and that someone is the taxpayer, in this case. I guess I am paying for it anyway, so I’d better use it!

These days it seems easy to steal some bandwidth. You just open your laptop and look for open wireless networks. Can’t do this if you are on dialup internet. Sure, they could give you viruses and expose you to hackers, but it is just so tempting to get the free broadband. It’s really hard to think of this as stealing. Is anyone really affected? Does anyone really get hurt? I remember hearing of a report of some man being arrested for stealing wireless from a coffee shop, because he sat in his car outside instead of going in. Is this where things are headed?

I’ll admit that it’s wrong to steal, and as someone who knows my way around a computer I know that something is really being stolen. You see, whoever set up that wireless network paid for that bandwidth from the ISP. If I’m using some of it at a given time, the person who paid has less to use. However, broadband provides so much bandwidth that, in general, no one would ever notice. That doesn’t justify it, though. If you steal and no one notices, it’s is still stealing!

I keep getting ads about switching to Charter Internet as a broadband internet provider, but I remain skeptical.  How well does it really work?  So far, I don’t know anyone personally that has been brave enough to try it out.  I don’t think that most people are willing to try a new technology, let alone one as important as their ISP, without a word-of-mouth recommendation.  That’s why I think Charter Internet is clearly barking up the wrong tree with their advertising.

I haven’t seen any offer that they’ve had yet that says that I can try their service for free with no strings attached.  They just keep sending me ad after ad with the same information.  There’s no way that it will get me to switch from my current cable broadband provider, even if it is less expensive.  I can’t afford to be without my internet!  To try them out, I would keep my old service and get their new one as well.  Without a free trial, though, it just makes no sense.  So, until someone else I know is brave enough to try out this new technology, I’m attached to my cable modem.

Internet that’s everywhere and super quick has a lot of advantages.  Many people race to get the latest gadget, little mini supercomputers that are always online, with good reason. With the dawn of mobile high speed internet providers, you can leave your computer at home and access your data from anywhere. Why tie your data to a desktop, when with broadband access it can be online, which means it’s anywhere you are.

This is called virtualization and it’s more places than you might think. Google already lets you access documents and mail from any computer. Microsoft already lets you keep traveling profile, but is also designing an operating system that will go with you, wherever you go. Eventually you will be able to take all of your favorite movies and music from anywhere, without dragging around clunky video or music players, and worrying about how to plug things in. This is the future of broadband, and it’s going to be everywhere!

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Choosing a dial-up provider does not need to be a difficult task if you know what you will be using the internet for. June, NetZero, and People PC have been around for quite some time now. So it is safe to assume you will relatively get the same level of service right? Wrong! The best thing you can do to find out how their service fairs, is by asking others how they like their service. Many times, dialup providers offer low prices, but make up for that with very poor customer service. So be sure to checkout reviews before you buy.

In Japan, fiber optics has been reaching speeds of 100 Mbps, unheard of in the USA, since 2007. In China, 2.5 million new users went online with fiber optic connections last year, according to the USA Today article. South Korea has a population that is 85% connected to the web and a significant portion are connected through fiber optics at speeds 22 times what we reach in the USA. France’s connection is eight times faster than ours. Verizon FiOS has recently introduced a 50 Mbps fiber optics package, which is a start and, according to USA Today, 303,000 American homes joined the fiber optics crowd last year alone. More than one million American homes now use fiber optics to access the web, a promising trend.

As information flies throughout the world on fiber optic connections, it will change the way we work, the way we go to school and the way we are able to learn about and interact with our world.

Deciding which high speed cable provider takes the cake is not easier said than done. There are many variables to consider including price and quality of service. These 2 variables alone can cause a stressful experience for those of us choosing a new ISP. The real key is to know how good the service is in your neighborhood. Most ISP connections depend largely on how current their infrastructure is and many lines out there may be decades old. Compare that with new fiber optics and cable will be fighting a loosing battle unless they come up with new technology that will allow for higher speeds like the 40G network. If you want to see how Cable ISP stack up against each other, we have prepared a page dedicated to highlight the differences.

Faster by far than anything else that DSL, dial-up cable or satellite can provide, fiber optics is less expensive to lay down than copper wire, making it easier for fiber optics infrastructure to expand quickly. Current fiber optics connection, download and upload speeds, while beyond the upper limits of other Internet technologies, are merely scratching the surface of what fiber optics are capable of delivering. It is estimated that, with the proper investment and infrastructure in place, terabytes of information could be sent down a fiber optics line in seconds.

High Speed Internet Providers Give Us Access To The Most Amazing Tools On The Internet. The digital age has expanded the reach we have across the entire world. Our circle of friends, contacts, and even employees are no longer limited to the physical neighborhood. Not only has the internet enhanced our ability to communicate, but ISP’s give us access to the best research tool ever invented. When was the last time you looked something up in an encyclopedia? It has probably been a very long time — at least a decade for me. That is because if i want to spell something or define a term or learn more about something, the internet gives me responses in a fast and furious fashion compared to the old world. All we need now is for our US broadband providers to keep up with the rest of the world in terms of speed at an affordable price.

It is no mystery that the US Broadband Market is facing a congested network as more and more people sign up for service. The congestion problem is huge since it would take a mammoth effort on the part of the ISP’s as well as the US government to upgrade the infrastructure already laid out across America. Some have even joked that the Peregrine Falcon will be a faster way to send messages than through your traditional high speed internet provider. Nortel came up with a solution that has not been deployed, but will be huge. They have come up with a proprietary technology that will allow data transfer speeds 4x to 10x faster through the existing US infrastructure. That is huge. We really have to love innovation.