According to www.internetworldstats.com, although a little more than 10% of the world's inhabitants have Internet access, it is densely used in industrialized nations, with roughly 60% to 66% of the populations of these countries "wired up" one way or another, with a high of 76.9% for Sweden. Of those, roughly 70% of businesses have a broadband connection, defined as anything ADSL, cable or better, including T1, T3 and OC access, with around 45% of homes connecting with broadband connections and 55% using dialup connections. Why are so many homes using broadband? Two main reasons: it's faster, so you can download programs and files in minutes rather than hours, and it allows several computers to share the bandwidth together and build home networks that allow several computers to communicate together and share the Internet pipe.
Anywhere you can get a phone line, you can get dialup connection going, even using your cell phone with the right connector cable and carrier. Because of the universal use, it is often the only choice in remote areas and smaller towns and villages. The trade-off is that the amount of data you can send is small, ranging from 33.6 Kbps to 56 Kbps. This is enough to browse the web a bit and check your email online, but barely enough to download larger files over night and effectively useless in trying to share in a network of several computers. Billing is normally done by the hour of usage, but you can usually get packages that offer unlimited hours of online time.
Cable is available less readily than dialup, but reaches a wider part of the population than DSL. It is a decent choice for home networking because it allows for faster downloads, but there's a caveat: the bandwidth is shared by all the homes subscribing to that service in the same neighbourhood. As a result, during peak hours, typically from 6pm to 11pm, download speeds can slow down significantly as network congestion increases, similar to how highway speeds decrease during rush hour because too many cars are trying to drive on the same stretch of road. Billing is normally flat rate and can be added on to your cable TV bill.
DSL, which stands for Digital Subscriber Line, and although there are many different kinds, the main difference is in the amount of data that can be sent upstream or downstream - the two most common varieties are ADSL, which is Asymmetrical and has different rates for upload and download with 640 Kbps upstream and 3 Mbps downstream typical, and SDSL, which is Symmetrical and has the same rate of speed for uploading and downloading. If there is less than 5 kilometers of telephone wire between your home and the nearest CO, or Telephone Company's Central Office, a line card can be put in the CO that strips out ultra high frequencies, which get converted into data packets and redirected them to the Internet. Billing is normally similar to dialup, with hours of usage or gigs of transfer, but flat rate packages are normally available as well.
Larger connections speeds, like T1, T3 and OC are normally used only by businesses, as they will cost thousands of dollars per month and require expensive equipment to connect - of course, we can always dream.
