Imagine the line from your phone out to the street, connected to everyone else’s phone lines, as a very long interconnected water hose. The sections of the hose that are running under the street are HUGE – they carry everyone’s water. With your water bill, you pay for a certain sized hose to run from the street into your house. This determines how much water you can get, and how fast.

The same is true for your phone service. “Regular” phone service is a small-sized line running into your house. The pipes under the street are the Internet. This works perfectly fine for TTY and voice calls. And it works okay for using your computer online – most of the time.

Graphics – digital pictures, ‘busy’ web sites, and video conferencing – take up a LOT of space in the line. It’s like using water to wash a load of clothes instead of washing your hands! If you have a small hose, it will take a long time to do. That’s why you need a bigger hose, “high bandwidth”, “broadband”.

That’s the pipe. You also need an ISP – Internet Service Provider. Think of it as the valve that connects your pipe to the big one.

You can buy broadband internet connection and internet service separately, or buy both ‘bundled’ together from the same company.

At first, most people used their ‘regular’ phone line for internet connection and just purchased internet service. They would buy AOL ISP service and use their AT&T phone line to dial in, for example. If this person wants to use VRS, they must upgrade the ‘regular’ phone line to broadband. They could buy that new big pipe from AT&T, Sprint, AOL, their local phone company, or many more. Often, a person in this scenario will keep their AOL ISP service because they are familiar with it, their friends know their XXXX@aol.com email address, they don’t want to bother with moving their address book to new software, etc.

A person who is willing to make the change in their ISP service provider, or who is getting internet access for the first time, is likely to not bother with purchasing internet service separately. When companies sell broadband internet connection, it automatically allows you to connect to the internet [internet service]. It also comes with email addresses, a place on the internet where you can create web pages, etc. The selling point of ‘content provider’ ISPs like AOL and MSN are that they make it easier to use the internet. They purposely handhold their members. If you don’t need that level of service, purchasing a broadband internet connection and using its internet service capabilities may be best for you.