Cheap Broadband – It can’t get cheaper than this.
Others offer broadband bundle plans, while some resort to the “creating your own ISP" concept, letting the subscribers decide the service that they want. But the big question is if there is such a cheap broadband provider?
Because of the obvious reason that broadband is a lot faster than dial-up, more and more Internet geeks are in the look out for the best broadband provider available. Though competition-wise, dial-up seems to have lost in the battle, some companies that offer dial-up connectivity such as Netscape Internet Service and Netzero, introduced the service called Web Accelerator, a feature that promises to give their subscribers a faster online experience similar to broadband.
Sounds like cheap broadband? Yes, to some extent because knowing that dial-up is way cheaper than broadband, then Web Accelerator is the solution to budget-conscious individuals who seeks a much faster access. Well how does Web Accelerator work really? Is it really broadband?
The answer is a big no.
Though Web Accelerator helps to make Web pages load faster, the Internet connection speed remains the same. It is still dial-up and Web Accelerator does not speed up the connection but the online experience of the subscriber itself. The secret is called caching. Like all browsers perhaps, Web Accelerator stores the content of the Web pages that were previously visited by the user, making it faster to load the next time that the user visits the same site. These files, also referred to as cache, are stored in the computer and will be used again once being triggered, making it unnecessary for the browser to download the same files again and again.
However, there is a limit on the number of files to be stored on the cache folder. Once it is filled up, then Web Accelerator is no longer functional. In addition, cache files can become damaged over time. Because of this, it will be difficult to load Web pages, resulting to the appearance of error messages like “The page cannot be displayed" or “The page cannot be found". The solution for this is to purge these cache files to refresh the Web Accelerator. This is the drawback that makes customers shift to the “real" broadband.
Though dial-up access can on some way be considered as cheap broadband, it is still advisable to go for the real thing if it really suits your needs. It would be best to ask or consult your nearest broadband service provider representative for a plan that fits your budget. Who knows? Broadband is cheap after all.