Verizon Wireless, for example, offers speeds of 300 kilobits to 500 kilobits -- comparable to the speed of a cable modem or digital subscriber line -- in three cities, Baltimore, Washington and San Diego.
Once at the top of the lift the speed of the cable gently slows down, but it is barely noticeable on the ride.
Lucent said the combination would help speed the transition of cable TV networks from one-way broadcast capability to two-way interactive communications.
Richard Heene is the inevitable product of this reigning culture, where "news," "reality" television and reality itself are hopelessly scrambled and the warp-speed imperatives of cable-Internet competition allow no time for fact checking.
But satellite access speeds, like those of cable, can vary because you are sharing access -- in this case transponder space -- with other users.
The reason Microsoft labored strenuously to prevent AOL from grabbing AT&T's cable TV network is that the high-speed data pipes of cable are viewed as a crucial distribution channel for digital music, movies and Internet services -- and software -- of all kinds.
Gigabit Squared described the next generation of Internet service as two gigabits — about 2,000 megabits per second, roughly 71 times the speed of a standard cable modem.
The most popular Wi-Fi variant at the moment, 802.11b, is also much faster than Bluetooth, operating at up to 11 million bits per second -- or about eight times the speed of D.S.L. and cable modems.
The speed of your SURFboard cable modem will depend on your Internet service speed.
