International Data Corp. analysts in Framingham, Mass., predict that 11 percent of those on-line at home will be using some kind of fast connection by the end of the year, whether it's a special modem from their cable company or a superfast digital line from the phone company. Six percent are using those connections already. Those numbers do look cautious when you consider the incredible growth cable modems and digital phone lines had in 1999. Superfast DSL phone lines increased by 10 times last year, from 30,000 to 330,000. By the end of this year, that number will be up to 1.1 million, Harris said.
More good stuff is on the way.
And chances are, you'll have the opportunity to get that fast connection either at work or at home by the end of this year. We've been waiting a long time for those media goodies to get here, much longer than experts originally predicted. Even Blockbuster executives predicted in 1994 that 20 percent of us would have movies on demand by 2000, and others made even rosier predictions. But today, just a few hundred thousand people nationwide have had them, and those were part of pilot projects. Whether this merger, between two companies that know almost nothing about each other's businesses, will work out remains to be seen.