Wrong. Actually, your hard drive -- about the slowest thing in your computer -- pumps out data about 300 times as fast. (You don't want to know how much faster data comes out of RAM.)

The broadband picture is about to get lots better. The broadband bottleneck has been obvious for a while, and it has been equally obvious that the people who solve it are going to be very, very rich.

That pot of gold has inspired a race to produce the first viable technology.

This just in
On Feb. 17, Microsoft revealed that it is working with 12 broadcasters and cable programmers in a series of nationwide trials that will use a portion of the regular television signal to deliver data, according to the software giant based in Redmond, Wash.

The data are packed into a part of the television signal known as the Vertical Blanking Interval. The technology works on both broadcast and cable television, and reportedly delivers in the neighborhood of a megabyte per second throughput over broadcast, and about eight times that over a cable network.

Broadcast-enabled PCs running Microsoft Windows 98 will be capable of receiving and displaying these data, as will current WebTV Plus boxes with a free WebTV Plus software upgrade scheduled to be available later this year.

Television broadcasters and cable programmers involved in the trials include Capitol Broadcasting Co. Inc., Citytv, Cox Broadcasting, E.W. Scripps Co., Guthy-Renker, Kcts-PBS of Seattle, MuchMusic, New England Cable News, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Paramount Stations Group, Sinclair Broadcasting Group and Wfla-TV of Tampa, Fla.

Participating television broadcasters will be able to send data -- such as tickers with national news, sports, stocks, headlines and programming news -- to computer users tuned to the broadcasters' channels. The VBI delivery system allows stations to "broadcast" data in the form of web pages that can be stored on a computer hard drive and viewed later. These data can be delivered on request via late-night data downloads that do not tie up consumers' phone lines.

The technology also allows broadcasters an immediate avenue to begin adding enhancements to TV programs before digital television is introduced in the United States.

Microsoft supplied broadcasters with the hardware and software necessary for the trials. Each broadcaster received a PC server running the Windows NT Server operating system version 4.0, hardware required for VBI injections, and broadcast server software developed by Microsoft that uses standard Internet IP multicasting protocols.

There are several points to consider here.

First, this technology offers near T1 (and better) speeds over the existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Second, the broadcast version of this technology offers near T1 speed downstream over a wireless connection.

But perhaps the most important difference is that this is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week connection. You don't have to connect with an ISP, any more than you have to get your television set to connect to a television station or a cable system.

This changes everything.

Now, users accessing on-line news generally have slow connections that they must initiate. A 24-by-7 connection, on the other hand, will allow better access to current on-line products such as web sites, finally allow push technologies to become something more than a curiosity, and encourage the advent of new technologies.

With an always-on connection, for example, newspapers could "publish" their products to your computer at, say, 6 a.m., so it is waiting for you when you get up.

The Web is a print design transplanted to a new medium. Broadband 24-by-7 connections will allow new media to start developing new designs.

DSL
Another provocative announcement came in January with the formation of a consortium comprising Microsoft, Baby Bells, GTE, Compaq and just about anyone claiming to be a technology company.

This consortium agreed on a standard for a new Digital Subscriber Line format. DSL technology has been floating around for a while, but it has been expensive, a technician had to come to your house and install a splitter to separate voice and data on the line, and, worst of all, phone companies had to upgrade their equipment.

Now, phone companies don't usually count product cycles in web years. Take ISDN, for instance. It promised to be a blindingly fast service when it was announced. More than a decade later, it's only about twice as fast as a high-speed modem --for roughly 25 times the monthly cost.

But the new DSL requires only a DSL modem, which should be available for under $200 by the end of the year. U.S West has announced it will roll out the service in 14 states this year, Bell Atlantic has a pilot program already under way in northern Virginia, and the other Bells are promising wide roll out in '98 and '99.

Check this bottom line:

Cable modems
Meanwhile, Microsoft (surprised?) and a consortium of cable companies are working to roll out cable modem service. These modems will run at T1 speeds along with your cable service.

Pilot programs across the country are offering this service for about $60 a month.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the cable network was designed to send the same program to everyone's TV, not the lone page you want delivered to your machine alone.

In other words, cable system upgrades are necessary. But they are happening, because cable companies are afraid they won't be able to compete if their competitors are able to deliver massive amounts of data -- up to and including video.

Satellites
While the cable companies dig, the skies will fill with the hundreds of telecommunication satellites that are scheduled for launch over the next three years.

A consortium led by Microsoft -- Hey! Notice a trend here? -- plans to launch more than 100 satellites designed to provide throughput in the T1 class without wires to anywhere on the globe. Motorola has announced plans to launch around 80 satellites in a similar project. Other launches are planned. This is another broadband wireless technology that offers 24-by-7 service.

So! Lots of connectivity technologies are about to spill out of the pipeline. All of them are broadband. All of them are 24-by-7. Many of them are wireless.

Which one will win?

Which one should you bet the company on? You can bet the company upon whomever you please.

You might want to consider the lead of Microsoft, though, the technology company led by the great Bill Gates (either the leading technologist of our time, or the incarnation of Satan himself, depending on whether or not you spent your hard-earned cash on a Macintosh or stock in a competitor).

You'll notice that Gates wins, no matter which of these technologies wins -- and which of them go into the special tech purgatory reserved for eight-track tapes, Betamax videocassette recorders and those other Technologies That Didn't Quite Make It.

It ain't gambling when you own every horse in the race. That may sound funny, until you realize that Microsoft and Gates have committed a billion dollars or more to many of these technologies.

It also goes a long way toward explaining Microsoft's seemingly odd behavior in the on-line business. Almost all of Microsoft's efforts -- Msnbc, the Microsoft Network -- have been criticized for being too fat and slow for current connections.

But think of it this way: It's one thing to criticize a company for building grand touring sedans in, say, the '40s, before the interstate highway system was built. It's quite another thing if that car company is holding the contracts to build the interstates.

Which brings us to this final point to ponder:

If Microsoft's Video Blanking Interval technology, for example, wins and becomes the proverbial information super highway, exactly whose content do you think is going to get first crack at all those Windows 98 desktops?

-- Christopher J. Feola

See also How DSL works

From THE COLE PAPERS, March 1998, Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved.