Broadband will not be a casualty of the meltdown

You know things are bad when we need to regress to dial-up internet connections. What’s next? The return of the laserdisc?

And yet, this is exactly what NetZero is proposing. In their most recent commercial, a spokesman promises savings of up to $300 a year if you switch back to the more archaic form of internet access. The tagline? “It comes down to a need for speed, or the need to save.” I’ll take speed, thank you very much. My unemploymentality has made me cheap – not crazy.

Three hundred dollars is just not enough money to force me back to a time when streaming video was all but a pipe dream. The loss of productivity alone takes away from any potential savings. I get frustrated when an email doesn’t open instantly. I can’t imagine clicking my inbox, then going to make a sandwich while I wait for it to open.

I understand NetZero’s effort to capitalize on our crummy economy. They’re not the first and they won’t be the last. Over the holidays, discount shops like Ross and Marshalls bragged about their ever-expanding inventory thanks to poor department store sales. And it worked. I did pretty much all of my Christmas shopping at one or the other.

I don’t think NetZero will be as successful. There are a lot of things I would give up before high speed internet. Cable TV, for example. Cell phone even. Heck, I’d live on Cup o’ Noodles for a while if it meant I could keep my broadband connection. High blood pressure is a small price to pay for productivity. Twenty-five dollars a month is a steal.

I’d pay just about anything not to hear this sound again.