Muhammad,
I think the AOL deal is with Hughes (operators of the DirectPC plan). As such, it will also be phone line up/satellite down. The worst thing about DirectPC is that they monitor your downloads, and if it goes over a certain amount, they limit your account---throttling it way down to something like a 56K line. They keep the governor on until they sense you have returned to "normal" downloads. DirectPc will not tell you what those threshholds are that click in the limiter. They just do it. They say this is to make sure everybody "stays even" (Communism of cyberspace has arrived). Sure, maybe a few people will try to run a million-hit-an-hour porno site off of DirectPC, but why punish everyone for what a few people do? Why not just limit the real offenders. It is not at all rare for me to download 10 GIGS a day of data, graphics and audio files, etc. This is common, specially in businesses, not to mention gamers.
One other thing about DirectPC is that they proxy/cache a lot of content for everyone, newsgroups, news, and of course lots and lots of ad spam.
I have not yet heard whether the MSN deal, which is claimed to offer up AND down satellite speeds around 1 meg, will also put limits on download volume. But I am pretty sure they will sense this is an opportunity to shovel tons of ad offers your way.
DSL reamins an option, cost and speed wise, but it is hard to get installed. My brother, in Boston, ordered it and was told it would be installed within 5 weeks (yikes!). After waiting 9 weeks and hearing nothing, he called. They could give him no firm info on when they could install it, so he cancelled the order.
Everyone keeps talking about how "any day now" we're going to be watching tv, movies and all kinds of marvelous broadband content on the Net. I use both T-1 and cable, and if a set up like mine is what they are talking about to make it possible for everyone to participate in the forthcoming spasm of rich media, well, I just don't see it happening. Right now I have trouble even seeing the 2 inch video that MSNBC dishes out occasionally. Miserable. Forrester Research has said they predict that even by 2004, 65% of users will still be using 56K dial ups. Soooo, we'll see.
BobT.
A Indiana Boy
