"Living in Europe, I shouldn't need a T1 to access ZerO News,
especially considering that it's located on a site justifiably priding
itself on all it's done in the name of public access. But the large
Public Netbase icons slow the whole navigation process to a crawl."

In this respect I just want to make a simple comment. Although the
t0-site is called Public Netbase it never was or aimed at being a big
access provider. It is big in content, since most of its 250 users
supplied with internet access are artists, musicians, writers, whatever.
As a content provider netbase is important and rather unique in german
speaking countries. And the "large netbase icons" you have to download
just once and then they are there. So that's something I would take in
account even with a slow modem connection. The problem lies elsewhere.

From your email adress I can see that you are living in Berlin. To
bridge the rather small distance from Berlin to Vienna (600 kilometers)
info-packages have to travel through Stockholm, Amsterdam, Paris,
Geneve. That's the European Internet situation. "Europe" is a rather
abstract term. It's not so unified as the USA. There is no information
highway Europe. So this just for the american readers who very often
seem to be not so aware of the fact, that despite European Union
propaganda, Europe consists of many different countries with different
policies in culture, IT and telecommunications. So you can