Here is a thread talking about MB Trading, maybe they would work for you, as they seem to have excellent customer service. http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=62252 Here is their direct link- http://www.mbtrading.com Don-
I haven't traded dialup in a long time, but IB's TWS required very little bandwidth (less than any other realtime platform) when I did use it last. I have no indication that this has changed. It's primarily because they don't send every tick, which is a great advantage when the bots start fighting each other for the inside market, something that swamps my machine and 3 Mbps cable connection to another broker if it happens in more than a couple stocks at once, while IB's app running on another machine on my slow DSL connection quietly displays a snapshot a couple times a second (and I see no significant increase in bandwidth utilization on DUMeter - neat tool). You need a margin account to avoid the settlement delay issue. Most brokers (correctly) follow the "no trading with unsettled funds" rule for cash accounts, and those funds settle 3 biz days after the trade date. Just because you have a margin account does not mean that you have to use margin. There is no downside I can think of, other than personal discipline. As far as support and reliability, I can only suggest that you try for yourself. Remember that people hardly ever say anything when things work well - most of what you read are the complaints. Some people have few problems at all. Particularly with low-frequency trading, you are unlikely to run into problems. Worst case, you switch somewhere else. For the most part, application, funding, and de-funding if necessary are all electronic and fast.
All the platforms I've used (IB, Schwab, Ameritrade, E*Trade) let you choose the set of symbols you want to monitor and the type of monitoring you wish (real-time quotes/volume/greeks;time&sales; level II; charts). In addition, they all offer trading from a web page, and since you don't daytrade these pages should be plenty fast (although I was annoyed that E*Trade sprinkles their trading pages with banner ads). The last time I needed to talk with IB was over a year ago, and it wasn't to ask to place an order, so I can't say what they're like currently. Proceeds in a margin account should appear immediately; in a cash account it takes 3 working days (and Monday was not a working day). If your broker takes any longer than that and they can't resolve it, that's a good reason to change brokers. If you in fact have a cash account, that explains the delay, and you can change it to a margin account if you wish, often by just filling out a form online.