No Waiting on the Web

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Some regional Bell competitors, such as Covad Communications and NorthPoint Communications, are already offering DSL service in parts of Boston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and other big cities. But service areas are spotty, and DSL is being sold mainly to small and midsize businesses--at prices as high as $250 a month. But now that the industry has just come up with a technical standard for residential service, many carriers are expected to shift their home DSL efforts into a higher gear. US West already offers consumers DSL service in more than a dozen states, for example, and BellSouth says it will begin rolling out DSL service to consumers in Atlanta; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Raleigh, N.C.; and four other Southeastern cities before the end of this year. Many of these services will offer less than full-throttle speeds and cost $60 or more a month, but they still spell relief from today's World Wide Wait.

There is a wild card in the Internet deck too: wireless services. Hughes Network Systems sells DirecPC and DirecDuo dishes (the latter with both Web and TV reception) that can download Web pages at a relatively brisk 200,000 to 400,000 BPS. Last month Loral's CyberStar unit joined the fray with a satellite system of its own. Both are more expensive than cable and DSL (monthly fees can run more than $100 for unlimited use), but satellite dishes can be used almost anywhere, including vacation cabins and other rural locations. Several companies are also experimenting with a ground-based wireless technology known as multichannel, multipoint distribution service, or MDDS. It's a mouthful, but it can deliver speeds as fast as 5 million BPS.

Whether a turbocharged Web connection fundamentally changes the way we use the Internet or merely caffeinates our clicking remains to be seen. Even the reigning king of online content, America Online, isn't sure. "The challenge is to find new content that is both really exciting and needs to be interactive--you can't just do a bad version of TV," says Bob Pittman, president of America Online. He has a team at AOL working on concepts. In the meantime, we'll take the speed.