In fact, we know you can get online for less than the cost of buying The New York Times daily. You can even get online for free. They get replaced by something bigger, better, and faster. And when they are, prices for older models head for the basement - the bargain basement. That doesn't mean you can't surf the Net.
Telecommunications is still a relatively low-tech affair.
Once you leave the inside of your superbox and go out on the wires, things slow down to the speed of the first personal computers. If you want to get online, all you need is any piece of hardware that can emulate a VT-100 terminal. Connect it to a hot Unix box and you're moving at warp speed. Just about everything. Aside from reading the daily gigabytes of Usenet, you can use various e-mail servers to do Archie searches and grab files from ftp sites.