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When you signed up for your broadband package, the chances are you were told you would get speeds of up to 8MB, 16MB, or 24MB. You were probably also told that this speed may not be achievable due to the distance you live from the exchange. You probably weren't told that this speed is nigh on impossible to get, regardless of where you live.

Shocking discoveries have been made as a result of broadband users taking online speed tests, which is an internet tool that checks the speed of your connection by downloading a 10MB file roughly 19 times.

These results showed that when bandwidth is advertised at up to 8MB, for example, the actual speed received can be as low as 2.2MB, regardless of your distance from an exchange. One user who lived close to an exchange received just 9 Mbps of the advertised 16 Mbps. The lowest speed recorded in these speed tests was a meagre 0.09Mbps, which isn't much faster than dial-up.

Unfortunately, there is little the consumer can do to gain faster broadband speed. Computeractive magazine has taken a petition to Downing Street to try and prevent misleading advertising by broadband providers, in a bid to get the word 'typical' on the adverts, in much the same way credit cards advertise 'typical APR'.

Surprisingly, price isn't necessarily a factor in determining bandwidth. A cheap broadband package can be just as slow or fast as a more expensive one. Sometimes switching your provider can help, but it can be costly and stressful, especially if you're trying to end a contract early.

Check all your connections and wires first of all, and if you can't see a problem with those, contact your provider to see what they suggest. You may need an upgrade on your modem, or maybe even a new PC.

Bear in mind that certain times of the day, the internet is slower for everybody. Peak times in the UK tend to be between 4 and 6pm, when people tend to log on at the same time, thus clogging up the exchanges.

Want broadband? Find cheap broadband by comparing broadband providers online.

J Tillotson is a UK author specialising in technology and communications.

The Internet has accelerated a long-established cultural trend: more and more people are getting their news from electronic sources rather than the newspaper. Television and radio have made steady inroads; the trend really accelerated with as cable TV crept into a majority of American households and all those specialty channels became available to the populace. The noisiest, if not most successful cable channels are the news feeds that can be found in multiple formats and languages.

Now, the Internet has made further incursions into what was once the kingdom of Hearst, Wrigley and the Big Apple's Grey Lady: The New York Times. The once mighty Times is down to a quarter of a million in daily circulation and most of that is in the suburbs. It is also true that the Times is changin' however, as are most dailies and many community newspapers. Some papers, like the New York Times, have developed a number of features that are designed to maximize the internet's ability to target.

The NY Times and the Washington Post are two prominent examples of papers that publish daily online versions of their papers, which are updated several times daily. Moreover, they produce specialty sections that the online reader can select from a menu and have delivered daily via email. The Post will provide you with a section on technology or one on the arts, for example; each email is delivered daily with minimal graphics and perhaps half a dozen in-depth articles on the selected topic.

Most papers have similar "newsfeeds" that are provided based on selected areas of interest. Some papers also have developed blogging sections that solicit feedback on articles, attempting to retain "viewer" interest. And as online newspapers have grown more sophisticated in presenting information, they have also developed higher quality graphics that include lots of quality digital photographs - and increasingly, video.

The New York Times has taken to using video in its obit section. Their editors are sending camera crews to interview prominent and aging individuals so that they have video footage "in the can" for use upon the demise of the subject personality. The video is augmented with a voice-over or talking head delivering the standard obituary fare detailing the deceased's life, accomplishments, and surviving loved ones.

The Washington Post has inaugurated an online feature that is a series of interviews with interesting people and/or people with interesting careers. These are simply feature pieces that would once have been long written pieces in the features section accompanied by a set of photos. Now, they are video presentations of the individual talking into a camera about the facets of their lives that make them newsworthy. The pieces are edited so that they are not interviews, but rather singular presentations by the person who is being highlighted.

The San Jose Mercury News takes advantage of its hometown industrial base to turn out a regular online feature focused on the Silicon Valley: its businesses, trials and tribulations. While the Merc delivers this regular feature for free, the San Jose Business Journal wants a subscription fee.

That is also true of all the business journals operated by the parent company - which produces business weeklies for perhaps thirty of the nation's largest cities. It is increasingly true of specialty periodicals such as Business Week, which offers its online product for a fee. Specialty news services are finding that the subscription model can work just as well online as on the news rack.

Madison Lockwood is a customer relations associate for ApolloHosting.com. She brings years of experience as a small business consultant to helping prospective clients understand the ways in which a website may benefit them both personally and professionally. Apollo Hosting provides website hosting, ecommerce hosting, vps hosting, and web design services to a wide range of customers. Established in 1999, Apollo prides itself on the highest levels of customer support.