Northeast
(Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont)

Where you live determines from which company you can get cable Internet access. Usually, local cable TV companies have monopolies in certain areas and team up with national service providers, so you have only one choice for cable access. On the other hand, competition is fierce in metropolitan areas, and if you live in New York City, you may have up to 20 high-speed providers all competing for your money (DSL providers included).

We've summed up the main cable providers' services for some of the major metropolitan areas in this region. If you don't see the area where you live below, click here to find your local cable provider.

Connecticut and New Jersey
In Connecticut or New Jersey, your local cable television provider has probably teamed up with AT&T to bring you Internet access through the @Home service. Although @Home doesn't guarantee any minimum downstream speed, the average rate is about 1 to 1.5 mbps, according to customer service. In certain neighborhoods, those with fewer subscribers, customers can get up to 3 mbps. However, @Home limits its upstream data transfer speeds to 128 kbps in all areas.

In addition to high-speed Internet access, @Home offers many extra services, such as a customized Internet Explorer browser, up to seven email accounts, up to 10MB of Web space for a personal site, and free technical support 24/7. @Home also hosts a rich portal Web site designed specifically for those users with high-speed access (it contains lots of multimedia and high-bandwidth content). It features channels such as Chat, Lifestyle, Sports, Shopping, and News. You can also join @Home-only newsgroups to discuss your opinions about the service itself with other @Home subscribers. The @Home Internet service costs about $39.95 per month, which includes the cable modem rental. If you have your own cable modem, it costs about $29.95.

More importantly, you don't have to be an AT&T cable television service customer to sign up for its cable Internet service. Unfortunately, since your cable modem service works through your home's cable lines, you won't be able to use it when you're on the road, although @Home's NetMail does allow you to check email from any computer for free. If you want to surf the Web while traveling, you'll also need to sign up for the dial-up service, which costs a whopping 15 cents per minute while online, as well as a setup fee of $14.95.

Massachusetts
If you live in Massachusetts, chances are that RCN is your local cable provider. In fact, RCN claims to be the largest regional Internet service provider in the northeast. RCN doesn't officially guarantee a minimum transfer rate, but it claims that the slowest speeds you'll ever receive are 1.5 mbps downstream and 300 kbps upstream. If you already subscribe to RCN cable TV service, you can get cable Internet service for an extra $39.95 per month. With Internet access, you also get 10MB of Web space and five free email addresses. (You can buy an additional email account for $24 per year if you need one.) And if you travel, you can switch your setup to use RCN's dial-up Internet access for free--a service for which some providers charge extra.

New York City
New York City residents have several Internet access options, but Road Runner is one of the most widespread. Time Warner Cable launched its residential Road Runner cable Internet service during the fall of 1999, and it's now available to about 750,000 homes in southern Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. With each high-speed account, you also get several email addresses and Web space for a personal Web site. The service is designed to operate at speeds of 2 mbps for downloading data and 300 kbps for uploading data.

Road Runner teams up with more than 120 content partners, including MSNBC, the History Channel, and Time.com, which deliver national and local news using the Road Runner service. Although the Web is full of free content like this, the Road Runner service brings it all together for its subscribers in one place, much as the start pages of AOL, MSN, and EarthLink do.

On average, the service costs $39.95 per month but varies varies depending on location. There's also an average installation fee of about $100. Road Runner is expanding and plans to make its service available to all of the homes served by Time Warner and AT&T cable systems by the end of 2000.

More Locations

Take me back to the "Ultimate Guide to Cable Internet Access"