The phone company offers DSL, which piggybacks on existing phone lines. Cable modems offer speedy access via cable-TV wires. If those aren't available in your area, there's satellite access via television providers such as DirecTV.

Of course, speeds as well as costs vary depending on your location. But there's another, newer alternative you may not have considered or researched, and if you can get it at your location, it brings portability to the table as well as speed.

TOP Global's 3G Phoebus is a patented mobile wireless router. Looking much like a small pyramid that comes in black, silver or white, this device enables your existing cabled and wireless Wi-Fi network to connect to the Internet via the newer third-generation, or 3G, cellular network. This high-speed cellular technology is available in metropolitan areas across the country, including Seattle.

Using your existing wireless connections, the 3G Phoebus requires no special drivers or special installation. Your existing computers use their standard Wi-Fi connection hardware or Ethernet cables to communicate with the 3G Phoebus' built-in router.

To activate the 3G Phoebus, you simply insert the PCMCIA card you receive from your 3G cellular provider into the 3G Phoebus slot. And though you are probably provided with additional driver software for the PCMCIA card, according to Top Global, it's not needed.

Power on the unit, and all of your PDAs, Wi-Fi phones, computers and the like will be acquired by the 3G Phoebus and then be connected to the Internet via the 3G cellular network to which you subscribe. That's pretty much it.

3G mobile communications protocols supported by the 3G Phoebus include CDMA 1xRTT, EV-DO, EDGE and UMTS, and can be easily upgraded to support EV-DO Release A and HSDPA. The unit's router enables you to connect several of your devices to the 3G network simultaneously.

Average 3G speeds range from 400 to 700 kilobits per second with a peak rate of up to 2.4 megabits per second (Mbps). Future speeds are expected to reach up to 3.1 Mbps.

To put that into perspective, a good premium DSL speed is 1.5 Mbps. My DSL has an "extreme" version that takes me up to 3 Mbps.

As with all broadband connections, however, speeds can vary depending on distance to the telephone company's central office with DSL, number of users on at once with cable and so on.

But probably the most useful feature of a 3G Internet connection is mobility.

You can take your 3G Phoebus with you. Place the little pyramid in your car and you have a mobile hotspot.

With a range of about 300 feet, you could leave the 3G Phoebus in the car next to a park and you and anyone else you like will have Internet access. Or you can enable WAP or some other privacy protocol and keep all the access to yourself.

You can even be driving and have high-speed Internet access.

The 3G Phoebus sells for $499 and is available from Top Global (www.topglobalusa.com).

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