Yay! Royalty achieved!

[copycat]

Maybe you can surf via satellite? Don't need any cables, just a satellite receiver and muchos $$$, I think.

[Oldbushie]

Eh, with satellite you still need to be connected to the phone for uploading, cuz apparently satellite beams don't travel very well both ways. Downloading would be faster, but people would still try to call when you're on the internet. Why can't there just be an internet type splitter? Like have the phone be directly hooked up to the computer and when someone calls, your downloads slow down a bit but you can still use the phone by the computer? It must be possible...

I know the market is huge, after all.

Good luck with KQ6, Mango! If you don't find it this summer, I'll be back on broadband by September...

[Yonkey]

Well, I don't know about USA, but here in Canada there's something called Internet Call Waiting, where dial-up users subscribe to it and they can get a pop-up message whenever an incoming call comes in.  You can either accept (where I think it will disconnect and you can answer the call), reject or play a recording to them.  

I was dying for that kind of thing back in my dial-up days.  Ever since I got cable, the phone thing was never an issue.

As far as voice and data being on the same phone line, isn't that what DSL does?

[Oldbushie]

Going back on topic (briefly)...

After this post, I will be 2 posts away from Storm and nearing Great Oracle status (450 posts)! Woohoo!

Okay, now back to the benefits and downsides of various broadband...

[copycat]

Originally posted by oldbushie Eh, with satellite you still need to be connected to the phone for uploading, cuz apparently satellite beams don't travel very well both ways.

That was true for a long time, but a few weeks/months ago I read in an article it was now possible to do it both ways. How else do ya think satellite telephones work? What is true, is that a satellite beam going down cannot, at the same time, go up. So maybe it switches constantly, or it uses 2 beams. I don't know the technical details, what I do know is you don't need a telephone anymore, and it costs muchos money.

[copycat]

Originally posted by Yonkey
As far as voice and data being on the same phone line, isn't that what DSL does?

It's the same phone line, but it's divided into two parts. One part for DSL, one part for telephone. You see, telephones don't need a lot of bandwith, DSL does, but every normal telephone line can provide that bandwith. Don't know if the current telephone lines are suited for the next generation of DSL though.

You can also take ISDN, one telephone line, two (or more) SN's (subscriber numbers, so two actual telephone numbers), so no incoming calls cutting off internet sessions.

[Oldbushie]

It looks like we might get wireless Internet here by Christmas, my dad read about it on megapipe. I suppose it would be called "antenna broadband" or something. Should be nice, cuz then we can all be on the internet at once without needing any interconnections. It is not super-fast, but it is estimated to be about 1 megabit per second or something. Still pretty dang good compared to 56k (20x faster).

[Yonkey]

1 megabit per second? Wow, that's twice the speed of cable too!

[copycat]

Yonkey, please don't confuse bit and byte and cable is (currently) 10 Mbit per second.

[copycat]

Finally I can take this stupid armor off and join the ranks of royalty.

Look out below for falling armor!

[Oldbushie]

Congrats!!!!

And soon I will be a Great Oracle...

[copycat]

Originally posted by oldbushie
And soon I will be a Great Oracle...

Show-off! (?sp)