>>In Holland ADSL takes around $25 per month (excl. normal provider costs).
>>The problem is to get it into your "farmhouse".
>
>Yes, we have that problem here, too. What do you mean "excl. normal provider costs"? For the price I mentioned, we get everything included - even the required hardware, for zero installation costs. But we still have the problem that it isn't available everywhere.
>
>Hilmar.

The price includes the hardware.

Supposed that you just want some Internet connection at some provider (say Yahoo, WorldOnline, etc.) without ADSL, this takes money too. Before a year ago this was for free (I think throughout the world) and right now this varies by the services you want. For example, at home I still have it for free (i.e. no monthly standard fee) but pay per tick ($c1 per 5 minutes for the weekend ...). No additional normal telehone ticks are charged (though all goes via the normal telephone line). No further restrictions.

Others charge $30 monthly but then this includes a connection via the TV-cable (at 10MByte/s -> normal Ethernet). In between these amounts there may be everything like a restriction on MB's downloaded, receiving 10 email addresses (or just one) etc.

On top of that ADSL may be obtained for the $25 monthly. BTW, this varies too.
The variant I am talking about is about a normal analogue connection (could be ISDN) and operates via a normal network-IC. Download speed is 512 Kbit/s and upload speed is 128 Kbit/s.

In the backbone area it really seems to work well, looking at the fact that overhere (at work) we have a 128 Kbit/s leased line to the central provider, and the person working here via the Intranet (100 Mbit/s) really doesn't see the difference opposed to working at home on our website via the 512 Kbit ASDL (our own leased line being the bottleneck). Real smart I'd say (though this person could be sluggish ;)

Working at home on the companies' system really works according to the above, and overhere (Holland) we call this "Teleworking" (okay, "Telewerken" voor jou); Some 10 years ago the government "invented" this phenomenon, as a treatment to all the queues at the highways we have overhere. Apart from working at some website, it needs not that much more than a proper Citrix server in order to perform the normal development work at the normal machines. During weekends I use that connection too, but since I live in this farmhouse it's at 56Kbit only for me. But this too, works just satisfactory.

Last notes, for fun, for my own sadness, and what I just found out ... :

ADSL can be obtained at 1024 Kbit/s, and just allows for having a "home" webserver servicing at good speeds (hmmm, didn't we have a 128 Kbit leased line for our website at $ 600 / month or so ...).
Some rules from near past told that ADSL wasn't to be used for "services". However, http://www.hccnet.nl/info/adsl/index.cfm?id=222 (Dutch language :) seems to show otherwise (at the bottom of this page : "Because you having a fixed IP, you have the ability to run your own servers ...").

Now look for something to spend the $550 monthly saving :-)