Bandwidth on Demand

Thomas Edison said that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. George Margolin, an inventor in Newport Beach, California, adds another ingredient to his own creative process: acceleration.

An early cable modem user, Margolin raves, "The cable modem speeds up my patent searches, technology investigations, and trademark lookups." But for Margolin, whose inventions include a folding computer keyboard and special-effects equipment for filmmaking, getting the service installed was like something out of The Cable Guy. Four months elapsed between the time Comcast, his cable provider, said service would be available in his neighborhood and the day he finally got up and running--and the company had to dig an 80-foot trench in his neighbor's lawn and chop through the concrete of Margolin's garage to string a cable to his home office.

Still, Margolin is lucky. If you surf the Web or receive e-mails with mammoth attachments, you probably often feel that the Net is stuck in first gear. True, some users luxuriate in speedy access at work, via fast and costly connections such as T1 or frame relay lines, while others have opted for a technology such as Integrated Services Digital Network or satellite-dish access that yields slightly swifter surfing.

But for most, the promise of speed lies in cable modems and Digital Subscriber Lines. Both cable and DSL are much faster than analog modems. Each provides a persistent connection that cancels the need to dial out, thus banishing busy signals and slow connect times. And with the new G.Lite standard, DSL may soon be easier to install. Best of all, both cable and DSL are priced affordably for small businesses and home users.

Nice Web If You Can Get It

Of the two methods, cable modems are better for cheap, fast home access, while DSL is better for business users with more cash or a workplace that's not wired for cable. Sadly, however, "the decision will be based on what you can get," says Kevin Kahn of the Universal ADSL Working Group. "And today, most consumers can't get either."

At the end of 1998, the research firm Kinetic Strategies pegged the number of cable modems in use in North America at just 513,000; TeleChoice, a company that tracks the DSL industry, estimated the number of DSL lines in the United States at a piddling 39,000. In contrast, more than 27 million consumers around the world connect to the Net via dial-up modem, according to Internet market research firm Jupiter Communications. Thorny technical problems and a lack of standards continue to stand in the way of wider cable and DSL availability. But that should change soon. Analysts project up to 1000 percent growth for both technologies over the next few years. For now, though, Mach-speed broadband users remain the envy of the majority, who still lope along with a dial-up connection.