by Joseph Erickson

Created on: November 01, 2008   Last Updated: November 11, 2008

Of Americans who have Internet connections, over 73% of them have broadband, up almost 21% since 2006. That also means that 27% of Americans with Internet connections don't have broadband. You may be one of them. Have you thought about upgrading to broadband? Is it really worth the extra monthly expense?

What Are You Using It For?

There are many sites on the Internet that work fine with a dial up connection, but a lot of the newest and most popular sites all but require a faster connection. Sites like YouTube and UStream.tv are popular video streaming sites. With dial up, you'll have to wait more than 10 minutes before you're able to watch a video without it freezing. But with a broadband connection, you can start watching the minute the page fully loads. The same goes for sites like Flickr, a photo sharing site, and Facebook, a social networking site. These sites are very graphics heavy and, without a broadband connection, will be very slow.

Your ability to buy digital media will also be affected. For example, what if you buy a song from the iTunes Music Store, an on-line site that lets you buy and download music over the Internet? Over dial up, a three minute song will take 10 minutes to download. Over broadband that song will take half a minute to download. Imagine a whole album of songs. Or say you buy a movie on iTunes. Spiderman 3 on dial up will take about 6 days, but only 13 hours over broadband. That's quite a difference!

The bottom line is that, by moving to broadband, you'll be able to do more in less time. With that in mind, try to weight the cost against your potential time savings.

Types Of Broadband

There are three different types of consumer broadband; cable, DSL and satellite.

Satellite uses a satellite dish for connecting, much like satellite television. It has fast download speeds of 1.5Mbps, but dial up speeds for uploading to the Internet. If you're planning on making and uploading videos or music to the Internet, satellite won't be your first choice.

Cable is the next option, with maximum speeds of 7Mbps. It can be expensive though, so check your local cable provider for prices.

DSL is the last option and works over your phone line. Phone companies will have many different speed options for you to choose from.

You will usually choose between cable and DSL depending on availability and which has a cheaper monthly payment. Satellite is used when cable and DSL are not available in your area.

With all of these options, you will have a choice between download and upload speeds. 768Kbps is fine for light browsing and the occasional big download. If you want to upload files, you'll want a 1.5Mbps speed and if multiple people in your family will be on at once, you may want to look at a 3Mbps or larger option. Just remember that each step up is double the previous option, so things should download twice as fast. You can switch to higher and lower options by calling your service provider or changing it on the service provider's website.

The bottom line is that what you're buying is time. If your current connection isn't stopping you from doing what you want on-line, then stay with what you have. But broadband will download sites and files much faster and allow you more time to surf the web.

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