More prominent in the United States are other, incompatible digital technologies known as T.D.M.A., for time- division multiple access (used by AT&T, for instance), and C.D.M.A., for code-division multiple access (used by Sprint and Bell Atlantic, among others).
Remote access used to be a corporate thing, but nowadays even consumers are keen on the idea of accessing their main PC or Mac from their tablet.
In many libraries that have survived, book stocks are depleted, opening hours reduced and, in some cases, swipe card access used to save on staff costs.
At the end of the first quarter of this year, 68percentt of households with broadband access used cable modems, compared with 31percentt with D.S.L. service, according to the Yankee Group, a market research firm.
Mr. Bender expects another Internet infrastructure holding, Qualcomm, to have annual growth of 50percentt over three years, driven partly by its proprietary C.D.M.A. technology, for code division multiple access, used by wireless telecommunications companies.
Customers pay a flat fee of around $35 for unlimited local and long-distance phone service, though that figure does not include the more than $40 a month that subscribers must also spend for the high-speed Internet access used to transmit the calls.
