I have to be honest, I thought that the USA would be a little bit further ahead in the technology race with regards broadband internet connectivity, but how wrong I was!

As I intend to continue on the self-employed track when we get to the USA, I have been for the past week been trying to organize business class internet connectivity for the new house. First of all may I just say that ALL of the cable providers in Houston are charging what I consider to be ripoff prices for a service I can get in the UK for around £39 a month. All I wanted was 8meg down and 1meg up with a static IP address, and the quotes are coming back in the region of $600 to $700 a month! And if I want another 5 IP's on top of that I am looking at another $100 a month. In the UK you can get 8meg down cable with 768k up for £39 from a company called NTL. It uses the same cable as their TV service, as all the services in Houston do. Why the ramp up in price? It all uses the same cable, whether its business class or residential. And what is all this nonsense about a 2meg cap on the residential service? Sheesh!

Next step was to look at ASDL. Yet another shock. It seems the new house, as it is on a subdivision on a lake, is a little too far from the exchange (13000 FT) to achieve a speed any greater that 1.5meg down. That's something I have to live with, but when I asked the provider about the possibility of telcos upgrading to ASDL Max as we have just rolled out in the UK - I was told that was not on the cards. ADSL Max is a boon here for us, we only had 1.5 meg a month ago due to distance from the exchange, and now we get about 4.5 meg after switching.

Anyway, it looks like we will have to go for the ADSL and stick with co-locating the servers with a company in Houston, which should be about 75% cheaper than paying for business class cable! We have opted for www.OpLink.net as they seem to be getting lots of good reports from many of the broadband forums.

Now, all I need to do is sort out some telephones lines and HDTV! Wish me luck!

Richard