Since some of the Teeming Millions posed a question to me in a thread in Great Debates, about having a computer, I’ve been mulling this question over: What does it cost to use the Internet? I’ve wondered about comparing any bills one might get to a monthly telephone bill: You are charged $X for using Internet site A, $Y for using site B, and so on. What kinds of charges are common, what amounts are they, and how often is an Internet user charged?
Typical (not the best deal available) would be ~$20/month.
And your social life.
Is that an accurate appraisal or what? 
…and if you’re not careful, your GPA.
Some of the local providers in my area offer various discounts. I get the student rate of 14.95 per month. Cost of second phone line: $6.95. I don’t go to any sites that charge, no matter what they are.
Doesn’t America have free ISPs? All it costs me is a little extra in electricity. My ISP doesn’t charge, and is usually easy to dial into. It won’t support websites itself, but there are ways of getting around that.
And it lets me have access to SDMB.
I’m not sure if I completely follow your question. Are you asking me what I pay to have internet every month? About $40 a month for a cable connection. No other charges.
There are some, but most have limited loacal access numbers. In my area, Juno would be the only one and they’re starting to “encourage” you to get one of the pay services by giving more ads, making it difficult to dial in during busy times or booting you off. It’s easier just to pay for it and be done.
All mine costs me is ~$33,000 a year. They say it’s for my education, but I don’t seem to be learning, and I do seem to be spending a lot of time online.
I pay 19.95 a month/unlimited. There are cheaper isps here, but not by much. Quick aside, how many other people are locked into three year deals with their isp? (I am on my second year with Prodigy).
I didn’t know you could be locked in to a contract for internet service. In the past I used two different ISPs in the DC area (Erols and Zzapp!) and neither had lock-in clauses. You could sign up for three years to get the discount rate, and then cancel after 2 months and get the remaining 34 months credited back to your bank account.
I’m currently on Netzero, which is free up to 40 hours per month. As a backup to that I use Costco Internet (powered by SpinWay) which is also free.
I just signed up and paid 6 months ahead of time (cheaper rate for doing so), that also got me a free month, so I paid $107.00 for seven months, unlimited time and 5MB for a website.
I have two ISPs. One provides a free domain name for me, and I have to dial up to them at local call rates to upload. The other is another dial-up company, which charges me £10/month for unlimited 24/7 access at about 50k.
Like others: $19.95 a month
plus two or three hours of my life each day. Estimated at $30 an hour that comes to about 2269.95 a month.
Crikey!..gotta go!
My ISP is free. I’m using the new one offered by American Express. It is so vastly superior to any other free ISP i’ve ever used. No commercials, no banners, no time limits or popup windows. The only concession you have to make is that this little American Express logo, no bigger than a Windows icon, is always on your screen. You click on it and the basic Net menu comes up. Oh, and you have to have an AmEx card to use the thing.
A paid connection is a rather basic perk when you’re in the networking department of an ISP 
Wow that is a poopy ass deal. Mine is only costing me $9,000 and it’s a quality schoo. Has about 5 different education programs ranked in the top 5 nationally. Although I completely agree with the not learning anything.
Jesus. Given that mine cost about $2000/year (admittedly 10 years ago) that’s a hell of a lot of money. Either of you pays more in a year than I paid for my entire education!
Bouv: $33K x 4 = $132K
MTG: $9K x 4 = $36K
Me: $2 x 4 = $8
All I can say is: there better be a REAL good back end payoff to dropping that dime, folks! Yow!
And I escaped school with NO debt whatsoever! WOO!
Hmmmm paying 2k a year for school would be nice. Well technically all I have to pay of mine is 2k a year roughly. I’ve got around $6700 in grants. At least I got something good.
I pay $35/month for 1.25Mbps ADSL. And I always get over 1Mbps throughput. It’s very nice. Since I use the Internet at home probably 15-20 hours a week, that works out to ~ $0.43 an hour, or 0.7 cents per minute, which is a lot cheaper than a phone call!
Jman
I pay £20 a month for unlimited access at all times except 8-6 weekdays (holidays excepted). Since I’m rarely home 8-6 weekdays this works out fine for me. I don’t actually know that I’m saving any money this way because local calls are so cheap anyway, but I just don’t like thinking that I’m wasting money when I’m surfing.