I, Cringely | The Pulpit

Of course, you still need bandwidth, and the more the better, but very few applications make good use of the mega-amounts available to DSL users. Downloads are faster, as are uploads to peer-to-peer file sharing systems, but a couple hundred kilobits-per-second is plenty for anything else except watching movies or intensive gaming. So it must be the non-movie downloading non-networked game players Covad is targeting with its new TeleSurfer Link product, which offers 200 kilobits-per-second downstream and 64 kilobits-per-second upstream. The introductory price in the U.S. is $21.95 per month, rising to $39.95 per month after we stop noticing the charge on our credit card bill. That's AOL kinda money for what amounts to DSL Lite.