Forget size, it's speed that counts. Big cars and tiny phones may be popular status symbols now, but faster Internet access is going to be much more empowering in the emerging information society. And as we move towards high-speed access, the significant players are already shaping up to do battle.

By information technology standards, access techniques here in Ireland have gone through a calm phase. Most home users go online via modems, the fastest being 56kbps, while businesses are using a mixture of modems, ISDN, and leased lines.

But this is only the calm before the storm: the first high-speed access technologies are now being launched, and over the coming years we can look forward to a plethora of new data channels into homes and businesses, including high-speed telephone lines, broadband TV cables, digital television signals and satellite signals.

The most recent newcomer on the Irish scene, a satellite Internet service, arrived earlier this month courtesy of Dublin company, Net Results (www.netresults.ie). The new service, called Net Direct, offers download speeds of 400kbps using the Direct PC satellite service of Hughes Olivetti Telecom and British-based Easat Antennas. Hughes Network Systems was the first to launch a digital satellite system, but several more companies are expected to launch rival systems over the coming year or so.

But satellite won't be the only new kid on the high-speed block. Internet access via cable television offers the big advantage of being permanently online

there is no need to connect and hence no additional cost associated with staying online. Its disadvantages are that cable systems are not available everywhere and users share the available bandwidth, meaning the more that use it the less that is available to each.

Before we see widespread cable-based Internet access in Ireland, the cable companies will have to embark on expensive upgrades to their networks. Cable Management Ireland this week announced a £1 million upgrade which will offer its 10,000 subscribers in the Swords/Malahide area of Dublin two-way broadband access, starting this July.

CMI's finance director, Mr Steve Keaveney, says the cable modems will cost the users about £200, while the service will cost around £30 per month, which includes Internet access at speeds "in excess of 500kbps".

CMI is talking to PostGem about providing telephony services on the upgraded cable, based on Internet telephony standards. "I'd say it's on the cards this year," he says.

Threatening cable's ability to capture the lion's share of the domestic data market will be digital terrestrial television, which is also promising interactive Internet access besides television programmes. RTE's proposal for digital terrestrial, currently before the Government, involves what director of technology, Mr Peter Branagan, calls "instantaneous" Internet access for up to 100,000 people. He expects a Government decision in about five weeks' time.

The telephone companies and within a year we may have choices are unlikely to let cable and television companies steal a broadband march on them. They have a new technology in their armoury called ADSL, or asymmetric digital subscriber line, which theoretically provides access speeds of up to 8Mbps using the existing telephone lines into houses and offices. Telecom Eireann's Internet and multimedia research manager, Mr John O'Sullivan, says it is currently conducting in-house ADSL trials in Dublin. Following a trial in about three months' time a commercial service may be launched before year end.

Depending on the technology used, this ADSL service will provide download speeds of a few Mbps, like cable permanently online, while leaving the phone line free for normal use.

Between ADSL, digital terrestrial, cable and satellite, it looks like many users are in for a dose of speed.

Eoin Licken is at elicken@irish-times.ie