Methods and apparatuses to connect people for real time communications to access diverse categories of information. By maintaining the cross-section area, equipment-ground conductor compliance is preserved. This method depends on the development of new multi-system characteristics such as a relative workload metric to characterize the workload of the system relative to the collective capacity of all of the systems to handle the workload. When a subscriber performs the service selection process, the PPP proxy module references stored information about the selected telecommunications network, and establishes a PPP connection that serves as a transmission link for media or other content between the CPE and a telecommunications network having the selected service. Other methods and devices for measuring efficiency are further disclosed.