Broadband: There when you need it?

Broad opinions on broadband Readers offer their views on the pros and cons of slower dialup vs. high-speed Internet connections. Broadband: There when you need it? A week ago Saturday night, I thought I'd browse the Web awhile before bed. Only I discovered my connection to the Internet had vanished. Awaiting a return to life in the fast lane Count me on both sides of our readers' debate about connecting to the Internet: I agree that $45 a month is a lot to pay for a cable modem hookup. But I've decided to plunk down the money anyway and pay for cable's faster path to the Web after grinding my teeth through a few weeks with an agonizingly slow dialup phone modem.

A week ago Saturday night, I thought I'd browse the Web awhile before bed. Only I discovered my connection to the Internet had vanished.

Remembering that the connection had been flickering on and off all day, I made a late-night phone call to Time Warner's Road Runner, my Internet provider.

"All of our customers are unable to connect to the Internet at this time," a recorded message informed me. "If you are calling to report this, please hang up now."

Thanks, but no thanks. My curiosity drove me to stay on the line. The customer service agent -- Time Warner's are always available and usually quite helpful -- confessed that its Internet service had been buggy all day but had stopped cold at about 10 p.m., 90 minutes before my call. "Right now, there's an outage in the area," he said. "There are numerous problems now, and you're part of it."

In fact, he said, so was the entire Tampa Bay area. My connection returned about midnight. And a few days later, I called Road Runner to request a day's credit, which is provided after an outage but only to those who request it.

Time Warner spokeswoman Linda Chambers attributed the area-wide problem to a "router failure," adding, "Overall, I'd say we're extremely reliable."

All of which raises the question: How reliable is cable modem service?

Road Runner doesn't post performance statistics so a customer has no way of knowing how often the service is down. But readers sometimes call or write to tell us about outages in their neighborhoods. So is cable modem service less reliable than picking up a telephone with every expectation the dial tone will be there?

David Ross, Road Runner's general manager in the bay area, said the system is "up like 99.9 percent of the time." Besides, he said, comparing a conventional phone line with an always-on cable modem that moves a constant stream of data is like a "Model A vs. a Ferrari."

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