Broadband Internet access - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Broadband Internet access, often shortened to just "broadband", is a high data rate, low-latency connection to the Internet— typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56 kbit/s modem or satellite Internet with inherently high latency.

"Broadband penetration" is now treated as a key economic indicator

Economic indicator

An economic indicator is a statistic about the economy. Economic indicators allow analysis of economic performance and predictions of future performance. One application of economic indicators is the study of business cycles....

Not an exact technical term

The term broadband is best understood as an economic development

Economic development

Economic development generally refers to the sustained, concerted actions of policymakers and communities that promote the standard of living and economic health of a specific area...

term of art, rather than an exactly defined technical term denoting a certain Quality of service

Quality of service

The quality of service refers to several related aspects of telephony and computer networks that allow the transport of traffic with special requirements...

(QoS). Despite attempts to define "broadband" or equate it to a "high speed" data rate, official programs attempting to guarantee universal broadband or Internet as a right of citizenship usually apply criteria that cannot be described as technical in choosing service providers and technology. For example, the only universal access program in North America that guarantees access to "100% of civic addresses", the Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative

Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative

Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia is a government initiative intended to provide broadband services to 100% of civic addresses in Nova Scotia, Canada. The initiative is a public private partnership co-funded by the governments of Canada and Nova Scotia, and three Internet service providers...

applied fairly complex criteria to assess an acceptable solution and rejected some proposals for reasons that had nothing to do with data rate: usage based billing, high latency

Latency

Latency or latent may refer to:*Latency period , the time between exposure to a pathogen, chemical or radiation, and when symptoms first become apparent...

and service throttling for instance.

In general the term broadband implies instant access to a range of services that require a combination of high data rate, unmetered usage, low latency, high reliability and predictable (or no) "throttling" to work. Such services typically include:

VoIP and videoconferencing
Videoconferencing
Videoconferencing is the conduct of a videoconference by a set of telecommunication technologies which allow two or more locations to interact via two-way video and audio transmissions simultaneously...
VPN and remote systems administration
online gaming especially MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....

s which are interaction-intensive
Internet radio
Internet radio
Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...

and IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...

Accordingly, some high-data rate services such as metered 4G

In telecommunications, 4G is the fourth generation of cellular wireless standards. It is a successor to the 3G and 2G families of standards. In 2009, the ITU-R organization specified the IMT-Advanced requirements for 4G standards, setting peak speed requirements for 4G service at 100 Mbit/s...

in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

would not satisfy any reasonable definition of broadband as usage of Internet radio or TV is cost-prohibitive, and high latencies (upwards of 1 second) render VoIP and VPN inaccessible. The Nova Scotia process in particular rejected both 4G

for cost reasons and satellite Internet for latency

Latency

Latency or latent may refer to:*Latency period , the time between exposure to a pathogen, chemical or radiation, and when symptoms first become apparent...

reasons and approved instead a fixed wireless

Fixed wireless

Fixed wireless is the operation of wireless devices or systems used to connect two fixed locations with a radio or other wireless link, such as laser bridge. Usually, fixed wireless is part of a wireless LAN infrastructure. The purpose of a fixed wireless link is to enable data communications...

system based on Motorola Canopy.

Use of the term broadband by service providers should be viewed with skepticism and actual performance of required services must be examined to determine if any given connection will support it. Services like speedtest.net http://speedtest.net make it fairly simple to test average latency, but network reliability, Internet throttling policy and billing concerns (like usage based billing) cannot be discovered by a technical test.

Data rates

Dial-up modems are limited to a bitrate

Bitrate

In telecommunications and computing, bit rate is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time....

of about 60 kbit/s and require the dedicated use of a telephone line — whereas broadband technologies supply more than this rate and generally without disrupting telephone use.

Although various minimum bandwidths and maximum latencies have been used in definitions of broadband, ranging from 64 kbit/s up to 4.0 Mbit/s, the 2006 OECD report defined broadband as having download data transfer rates equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s, while the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

(US) Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

(FCC) as of 2010, defines "Basic Broadband" as data transmission speeds of at least 4 megabits per second, downstream (from the Internet to the user’s computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

) and 1 Mbit/s upstream (from the user’s computer to the Internet). The trend is to raise the threshold of the broadband definition as the marketplace rolls out faster services.

Data rates are defined in terms of maximum download because network and server conditions significantly affect the maximum speeds that can be achieved and because common consumer broadband technologies such as ADSL are "asymmetric"—supporting much lower maximum upload data rate than download.

Broadband is often called "high-speed" access to the Internet, because it usually has a high rate of data transmission. In general, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s or greater is more concisely considered broadband Internet access. The International Telecommunication Union

International Telecommunication Union

The International Telecommunication Union is the specialized agency of the United Nations which is responsible for information and communication technologies...

Standardization Sector (ITU-T

ITU-T

The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector is one of the three sectors of the International Telecommunication Union ; it coordinates standards for telecommunications....

) recommendation I.113 has defined broadband as a transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate

Primary rate interface

The Primary Rate Interface is a standardized telecommunications service level within the Integrated Services Digital Network specification for carrying multiple DS0 voice and data transmissions between a network and a user....

ISDN, at 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s. The US Federal Communications Commission definition of broadband is 4.0 Mbit/s. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has defined broadband as 256 kbit/s in at least one direction and this bit rate is the most common baseline that is marketed as "broadband" around the world. There is no specific bitrate defined by the industry, however, and "broadband

Broadband

The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...

" can mean lower-bitrate transmission methods. Some Internet Service Provider

Internet service provider

An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...

s (ISPs) use this to their advantage in marketing lower-bitrate connections as broadband.

In practice, the advertised maximum bandwidth

Bandwidth (computing)

In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...

is not always reliably available to the customer; physical link quality can vary, and ISPs usually allow a greater number of subscribers than their backbone connection

Internet backbone

The Internet backbone refers to the principal data routes between large, strategically interconnected networks and core routers in the Internet...

or neighbourhood access network

Access network

An access network is that part of a telecommunications network which connects subscribers to their immediate service provider. It is contrasted with the core network, which connects local providers to each other...

can handle, under the assumption that most users will not be using their full connection capacity very frequently. This aggregation strategy (known as a contended service) works more often than not, so users can typically burst to their full bandwidth most of the time; however, peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer

Peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...

(P2P) file sharing

File sharing

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digitally stored information, such as computer programs, multimedia , documents, or electronic books. It may be implemented through a variety of ways...

systems, often requiring extended durations of high bandwidth usage, violate these assumptions, and can cause major problems for ISPs. In some cases the contention ratio, or a download cap, is agreed in the contract, and businesses and other customers, who need a lower contention ratio or even an uncontended service, are typically charged more.

When traffic is particularly heavy, the ISP can deliberately throttle back users traffic, or just some kinds of traffic. This is known as traffic shaping

Traffic shaping

Traffic shaping is the control of computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, improve latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth for some kinds of packets by delaying other kinds of packets that meet certain criteria...

. Careful use of traffic shaping by the network provider can ensure quality of service

Quality of service

The quality of service refers to several related aspects of telephony and computer networks that allow the transport of traffic with special requirements...

for time critical services even on extremely busy networks, but overuse can lead to concerns about network neutrality

Network neutrality

Network neutrality is a principle that advocates no restrictions by Internet service providers or governments on consumers' access to networks that participate in the Internet...

if certain types of traffic are severely or completely blocked.

As takeup for these introductory products increases, telcos

Telephone company

A telephone company is a service provider of telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many were at one time nationalized or state-regulated monopolies...

are starting to offer higher bit rate services. For existing connections, this most of the time simply involves reconfiguring the existing equipment at each end of the connection.

As the bandwidth delivered to end users increases, the market expects that video on demand

Video on demand

Video on Demand or Audio and Video On Demand are systems which allow users to select and watch/listen to video or audio content on demand...

services streamed over the Internet will become more popular, though at the present time such services generally require specialized networks. The data rates on most broadband services still do not suffice to provide good quality video, as MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

video requires about 6 Mbit/s for good results. Adequate video for some purposes becomes possible at lower data rates, with rates of 768 kbit/s and 384 kbit/s used for some video conferencing applications, and rates as low as 100 kbit/s used for videophone

Videophone

A videophone is a telephone with a video screen, and is capable of full duplex video and audio transmissions for communication between people in real-time...

s using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. The MPEG-4

MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual digital data. It was introduced in late 1998 and designated a standard for a group of audio and video coding formats and related technology agreed upon by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group under the formal standard ISO/IEC...

format delivers high-quality video at 2 Mbit/s, at the low end of cable modem

Cable modem

A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...

and ADSL

Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

Asymmetric digital subscriber line is a type of digital subscriber line technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. It does this by utilizing frequencies that are not used by a voice...

performance.

At the turn of the century most residential access was by dial-up, while access from businesses was usually by broadband Internet access connections. In subsequent years, dial-up has declined. In rural areas where DSL and cable are not available, satellite Internet is a good solution.

Technology

The standard broadband technologies in most areas are ADSL and cable Internet

Cable internet

In telecommunications, cable Internet access, often shortened to cable Internet or simply cable, is a form of broadband Internet access that uses the cable television infrastructure. Like digital subscriber line and fiber to the premises services, cable Internet access provides network edge...

. Newer technologies in use include VDSL and pushing optical fibre connections closer to the subscriber in both telephone and cable plants. Fibre-optic communication, while only recently being used in fibre to the premises and fibre to the curb schemes, has played a crucial role in enabling Broadband Internet access by making transmission of information over larger distances much more cost-effective than copper wire technology.

In a few areas not served by cable or ADSL, community organizations have begun to install Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...

networks, and in some cities and towns local governments are installing municipal Wi-Fi networks. As of 2006, broadband mobile Internet access has become available at the consumer level in some countries, using the HSDPA

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access is an enhanced 3G mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity...

and EV-DO

Evolution-Data Optimized

Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data only is a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals, typically for broadband Internet access...

technologies. The newest technology being deployed for mobile and stationary broadband access is WiMAX

WiMAX

WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...

and LTE

3GPP Long Term Evolution

3GPP Long Term Evolution, usually referred to as LTE, is a standard for wireless communication of high-speed data for mobile phones and data terminals. It is based on the GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA network technologies, increasing the capacity and speed using new modulation techniques...

.

Other technologies in use include fixed wireless

Fixed wireless

, e.g. Motorola Canopy, and fixed 3G routers.

DSL (ADSL/SDSL)

DSL is a family of technologies that provides digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop. In telecommunications marketing, the term Digital Subscriber Line is widely understood to mean Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), the most commonly installed technical variety of DSL. DSL service is delivered simultaneously with regular telephone on the same telephone line. This is possible because DSL uses a higher frequency. These frequency bands are subsequently separated by filtering.

The data throughput of consumer DSL services typically ranges from 256 kbit/s to 20 Mbit/s in the direction to the customer (downstream), depending on DSL technology, line conditions, and service-level implementation. In ADSL, the data throughput in the upstream direction, (i.e. in the direction to the service provider) is lower, hence the designation of asymmetric service. In Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) service, the downstream and upstream data rates are equal.

Multilinking Modems

Roughly double the dial-up rate can be achieved with multilinking technology. What is required are two modems, two phone lines, two dial-up accounts, and ISP support for multilinking, or special software at the user end. This inverse multiplexing option was popular with some high-end users before ISDN, DSL and other technologies became available.

Diamond and other vendors had created dual phone line modems with bonding capability. The data rate of dual line modems is faster than 90 kbit/s. The Internet and phone charge will be twice the ordinary dial-up charge.

Load balancing

Load balancing (computing)

Load balancing is a computer networking methodology to distribute workload across multiple computers or a computer cluster, network links, central processing units, disk drives, or other resources, to achieve optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput, minimize response time, and avoid...

takes two Internet connections and feeds them into your network as one double data rate, more resilient Internet connection. By choosing two independent Internet providers the load balancing hardware will automatically use the line with least load which means should one line fail, the second one automatically takes up the slack.

ISDN

Integrated Services Digital Network

Integrated Services Digital Network is a set of communications standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the traditional circuits of the public switched telephone network...

(ISDN) was one of the oldest digital access methods for consumers and businesses to connect to the Internet. It is a telephone data service standard.
A basic rate ISDN line (known as ISDN-BRI) is an ISDN line with 2 data "bearer" channels (DS0 - 64 kbit/s each). Using ISDN terminal adapters (erroneously called modems), it is possible to bond together 2 or more separate ISDN-BRI lines to reach bandwidths of 256 kbit/s or more. The ISDN channel bonding technology has been used for video conference applications and broadband data transmission. Its use in the United States peaked in the late 1990s prior to the availability of DSL and cable modem technologies. Broadband service is usually compared to ISDN-BRI because this was the standard broadband access technology that formed a baseline for the challenges faced by the early broadband providers. These providers sought to compete against ISDN by offering faster and cheaper services to consumers.

Primary rate ISDN, known as ISDN-PRI, is an ISDN line with 23 DS0 channels and total bandwidth of 1,544 kbit/s (US standard). ISDN E1 (European standard) line is an ISDN lines with 30 DS0 channels and total bandwidth of 2,048 kbit/s. Because ISDN is a telephone-based product, a lot of the terminology and physical aspects of the line are shared by the ISDN-PRI used for voice services. An ISDN line can therefore be "provisioned

Provisioning

In telecommunication, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide services to its users. In NS/EP telecommunications services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.In a...

" for voice or data and many different options, depending on the equipment being used at any particular installation, and depending on the offerings of the telephone company's central office switch. Most ISDN-PRI's are used for telephone voice communication using large PBX systems, rather than for data. One obvious exception is that ISPs usually have ISDN-PRI's for handling ISDN data and modem calls.

Many of the earlier ISDN data lines used 56 kbit/s rather than 64 kbit/s "B" channels of data. This caused ISDN-BRI to be offered at both 128 kbit/s and 112 kbit/s rates, depending on the central office's switching equipment.

Advantages:

Constant data rate at 64 kbit/s for each DS0 channel.
Two way broadband symmetric data transmission, unlike ADSL.
One of the data channels can be used for phone conversation without disturbing the data transmission through the other data channel. When a phone call is ended, the bearer channel can immediately dial and re-connect itself to the data call.
Call setup is very quick.
Low latency
ISDN Voice clarity is unmatched by other phone services.
Caller ID
Caller ID
Caller ID , also called calling line identification or calling number identification or Calling Line Identification Presentation , is a telephone service, available in analog and digital phone systems and most Voice over Internet Protocol applications, that transmits a caller's number to...

is almost always available for no additional fee.
Maximum distance from the central office is much greater than it is for DSL.
When using ISDN-BRI, there is the possibility of using the low-bandwidth 16 kbit/s "D" channel for packet data and for always on capabilities.

Disadvantages:

ISDN offerings are dwindling in the marketplace due to the widespread use of faster and cheaper alternatives.
ISDN routers, terminal adapters ("modems"), and telephones are more expensive than ordinary plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service
Plain old telephone service is the voice-grade telephone service that remains the basic form of residential and small business service connection to the telephone network in many parts of the world....

(POTS) equipment, like dial-up modems.
ISDN provisioning
Provisioning
In telecommunication, provisioning is the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide services to its users. In NS/EP telecommunications services, "provisioning" equates to "initiation" and includes altering the state of an existing priority service or capability.In a...

can be complicated due to the great number of options available.
ISDN users must dial in to a provider that offers ISDN Internet service, which means that the call could be disconnected.
ISDN is billed as a phone line, to which is added the bill for Internet ISDN access.
"Always on" data connections are not available in all locations.
Some telephone companies charge unusual fees for ISDN, including call setup fees, per minute fees, and higher rates than normal for other services.

Leased Lines

Leased lines are highly-regulated services traditionally intended for businesses, that are managed through Public Service Commissions

Public Utilities Commission

A Utilities commission, Utility Regulatory Commission , Public Utilities Commission or Public Service Commission is a governing body that regulates the rates and services of a public utility...

(PSCs) in each state, must be fully defined in PSC tariff documents

Telecommunications tariffs

A telecommunications tariff is an open contract between a telecommunications service provider and the public, filed with a regulating body such as a Public Utilities Commission...

, and have management rules dating back to the early 1980s which still refer to teleprinter

Teleprinter

A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...

s as potential connection devices. As such, T-1 services have very strict and rigid service requirements which drive up the provider's maintenance costs and may require them to have a technician on standby 24 hours a day to repair the line if it malfunctions. (In comparison, ISDN and DSL are not regulated by the PSCs at all.) Due to the expensive and regulated nature of T-1 lines, they are normally installed under the provisions of a written agreement, the contract term being typically one to three years. However, there are usually few restrictions to an end-user's use of a T-1, uptime

Uptime

Uptime is a measure of the time a machine has been up without any downtime.It is often used as a measure of computer operating system reliability or stability, in that this time represents the time a computer can be left unattended without crashing, or needing to be rebooted for administrative or...

and bandwidth data rates may be guaranteed, quality of service may be supported, and blocks of static IP addresses are commonly included.

Since a T-1 was originally conceived for voice transmission, and voice T-1's are still widely used in businesses, it can be confusing to the uninitiated subscriber. It is often best to refer to the type of T-1 being considered, using the appropriate "data" or "voice" prefix to differentiate between the two. A voice T-1 would terminate at a phone company's central office (CO) for connection to the PSTN; a data T-1 terminates at a point of presence

Point of presence

A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point or interface point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room.In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system...

(POP) or data center

Data center

A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems...

. The T-1 line which is between a customer's premises and the POP or CO is called the local loop. The owner of the local loop need not be the owner of the network at the POP where your T-1 connects to the Internet, and so a T-1 subscriber may have contracts with these two organizations separately.

The nomenclature for a T-1 varies widely, cited in some circles a DS-1, a T1.5, a T1, or a DS1. Some of these try to distinguish amongst the different aspects of the line, considering the data standard a DS-1, and the physical structure of the trunk line a T-1 or T-1.5. They are also called leased line
Leased line
A leased line is a service contract between a provider and a customer, whereby the provider agrees to deliver a symmetric telecommunications line connecting two or more locations in exchange for a monthly rent . It is sometimes known as a 'Private Circuit' or 'Data Line' in the UK or as CDN in Italy...

s, but that terminology is usually for data rates under 1.5 Mbit/s. At times, a T-1 can be included in the term "leased line" or excluded from it. Whatever it is called, it is inherently related to other broadband access methods, which include T-3

T-carrier

In telecommunications, T-carrier, sometimes abbreviated as T-CXR, is the generic designator for any of several digitally multiplexed telecommunications carrier systems originally developed by Bell Labs and used in North America, Japan, and South Korea....

, SONET

Sonet

Sonet may refer to:* Sonet Records, European record label* Synchronous optical networking * Saab Sonett...

OC-3, and other T-carrier and Optical Carrier

Optical Carrier

Optical Carrier transmission rates are a standardized set of specifications of transmission bandwidth for digital signals that can be carried on Synchronous Optical Networking fiber optic networks...

s. Additionally, a T-1 might be aggregated with more than one T-1, producing an nxT-1, such as 4xT-1 which has exactly 4 times the bandwidth of a T-1.

When a T-1 is installed, there are a number of choices to be made: in the carrier chosen, the location of the demarcation point

Demarcation point

In telephony, the demarcation point is the point at which the public switched telephone network ends and connects with the customer's on-premises wiring. It is the dividing line which determines who is responsible for installation and maintenance of wiring and equipment -- customer/subscriber, or...

, the type of channel service unit

Channel service unit

In telecommunications, a channel service unit is a line bridging device for use with T-carrier that:*is used to perform loopback testing,*may perform bit stuffing,*may also provide a framing and formatting pattern compatible with the network,...

(CSU) or data service unit

Data service unit

A data service unit, sometimes called a digital service unit, is a piece of telecommunications circuit terminating equipment that transforms digital data between telephone company lines and local equipment. The device converts bipolar digital signals coming ultimately from a digital circuit and...

(DSU) used, the WAN

Wide area network

A wide area network is a telecommunication network that covers a broad area . Business and government entities utilize WANs to relay data among employees, clients, buyers, and suppliers from various geographical locations...

IP router used, the types of bandwidths chosen, etc. Specialized WAN routers are used with T-1 lines that route Internet or VPN data onto the T-1 line from the subscriber's packet-based (TCP/IP) network using customer premises equipment (CPE). The CPE typical consists of a CSU/DSU that converts the DS-1 data stream of the T-1 to a TCP/IP packet data stream for use in the customer's Ethernet

Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

LAN

Län

Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....

. It is noteworthy that many T-1 providers optionally maintain and/or sell the CPE as part of the service contract, which can affect the demarcation point and the ownership of the router, CSU, or DSU.

Although a T-1 has a maximum of 1.544 Mbit/s, a fractional T-1 might be offered which only uses an integer multiple of 128 kbit/s for bandwidth. In this manner, a customer might only purchase 1/12 or 1/3 of a T-1, which would be 128 kbit/s and 512 kbit/s, respectively.

T-1 and fractional T-1 data lines are symmetric, meaning that their upload and download data rates are the same.

Local Area Network

Most DSL modems and cable modems are connected to local computers by Ethernet or Wi-Fi. The speed of the Local Area Network

Local area network

A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...

is sometimes mistaken for the speed of Internet access, but the LAN must be connected to the Internet by some means which in most cases is slower than the 10, 100, or 1000 Mbit/s connection of the LAN. In a business or college campus, for example, the 100 Mbit/s Ethernet rate might be fully available to on-campus networks, but the Internet access line might provide a 4xT-1 (6 Mbit/s) or T3

Digital Signal 3

A Digital Signal 3 is a digital signal level 3 T-carrier. It may also be referred to as a T3 line.*The data rate for this type of signal is 44.736 Mbit/s.*This level of carrier can transport 28 DS1 level signals within its payload....

(44 Mbit/s) rate. This is typically shared with other local users and the access bandwidth of this leased line governs the end-user's data rate.

In certain locations, however, the Internet access rate might be as fast as the LAN. This would most commonly be the case at a POP or a data center, and not at a typical residence or business. When Ethernet Internet access is offered, it could be fiber-optic or copper twisted pair

Twisted pair

Twisted pair cabling is a type of wiring in which two conductors are twisted together for the purposes of canceling out electromagnetic interference from external sources; for instance, electromagnetic radiation from unshielded twisted pair cables, and crosstalk between neighboring pairs...

, and the bandwidth will conform to standard Ethernet data rates of up to 10 Gbit/s. Most 21st century computers have Ethernet hardware built in, and laptops have Wi-Fi while high speed Internet access hardware is usually external and not bundled with the computer.

Satellite broadband

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

s in geostationary orbit

Geostationary orbit

A geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the Earth's equator , with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period and an orbital eccentricity of approximately zero. An object in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, at a fixed position in the sky, to ground observers...

s are able to relay broadband data from the satellite company to each customer. Satellite Internet is usually among the most expensive ways of gaining broadband Internet access, but in rural areas it may be the only choice other than cellular broadband. However, costs have been coming down in recent years to the point that it is becoming more competitive with other broadband options.

Broadband satellite Internet also has a high latency problem which is due to the signal having to travel to an altitude of 35786 km (22,236.4 mi) above sea level (from the equator) out into space to a satellite in geostationary orbit and back to Earth again. The signal delay can be as much as 500 millisecond

Millisecond

A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond....

s to 900 milliseconds, which makes this service unsuitable for applications requiring real-time user input such as certain multiplayer Internet games and first-person shooters played over the connection. Despite this, it is still possible for many games to be played, but the scope is limited to real-time strategy

Real-time strategy

Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....

or turn-based games. The functionality of live interactive access to a distant computer can also be subject to the problems caused by high latency. Additionally, some satellite Internet providers do not support VPN due to latency issues. These problems are more than tolerable for just basic email access and web browsing and in most cases are barely noticeable.

For geostationary satellites there is no way to eliminate this problem. The delay is primarily due to the great distances travelled which, even at the speed of light (about 300000 km/s), can be significant. Even if all other signalling delays could be eliminated it still takes electromagnetic radio waves about 250 milliseconds, or a quarter of a second, to travel from ground level to the satellite and back to the ground, a total of over 71400 km (44,366 mi) to travel from the source to the destination, and over 143000 km (88,856.3 mi) for a round trip (user to ISP, and then back to user—with zero network delays). Factoring in other normal delays from network sources gives a typical one-way connection latency of 350 ms from the user to the ISP, or about 700 milliseconds latency for the total Round Trip Time (RTT) back to the user. This is far worse than most dial-up modem users' experience, at typically only 150–200 ms total latency.

Medium Earth Orbit

Medium Earth Orbit

Medium Earth orbit , sometimes called intermediate circular orbit , is the region of space around the Earth above low Earth orbit and below geostationary orbit ....

(MEO) and Low Earth Orbit

Low Earth orbit

A low Earth orbit is generally defined as an orbit within the locus extending from the Earth’s surface up to an altitude of 2,000 km...

(LEO) satellites however do not have such great delays. The current LEO constellations of Globalstar and Iridium satellites have delays of less than 40 ms round trip, but their throughput is less than broadband at 64 kbit/s per channel. The Globalstar constellation orbits 1,420 km above the earth and Iridium orbits at 670 km altitude. The proposed O3b Networks MEO constellation scheduled for deployment in 2012 would orbit at 8,062 km, with RTT latency of approximately 125 ms. The proposed new network is also designed for much higher throughput with links well in excess of 1 Gbit/s (Giga bits per second). The planned COMMStellation™

COMMStellation

COMMStellation is a network of 78 microsatellites with an additional six microsatellites to be used as spares. The constellation will be situated in a low Earth orbit and the satellites will travel on 6 orbital planes separated by 30 degrees of longitude. Each plane will contain 14 satellites which...

, scheduled for launch in 2015, will orbit the earth at 1,000 km with a latency of approximately 7 ms. This polar orbiting constellation of 78 microsatellites will provide global backhaul with throughput in excess of 1.2 Gbit/s.

Most satellite Internet providers also have a FAP (Fair Access Policy). Perhaps one of the largest disadvantages of satellite Internet, these FAPs usually throttle a user's throughput to dial-up data rates after a certain "invisible wall" is hit (usually around 200 MB a day). This FAP usually lasts for 24 hours after the wall is hit, and a user's throughput is restored to whatever tier they paid for. This makes bandwidth-intensive activities nearly impossible to complete in a reasonable amount of time (examples include P2P and newsgroup

Newsgroup

A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

binary downloading).

Some systems have a FAP based on a monthly limit of data downloaded, with download data rates reduced for the remainder of the month if the limit is exceeded.
Other Satellite Internet offers have advanced FAP mechanisms based on sliding time windows. These services verify download quotas during the last hours, days and weeks. The purpose is to allow temporary excessive downloads when needed while saving volume for the end of the month.

Advantages

True global broadband Internet access availability
Mobile connection to the Internet (with some providers)

Disadvantages

High latency
Latency (engineering)
Latency is a measure of time delay experienced in a system, the precise definition of which depends on the system and the time being measured. Latencies may have different meaning in different contexts.-Packet-switched networks:...

compared to other broadband services, especially 2-way satellite service
Unreliable: drop-outs are common during travel, inclement weather, and during sunspot activity
The narrow-beam highly directional antenna must be accurately pointed to the satellite orbiting overhead
The Fair Access Policy limits heavy usage, if applied by the service provider
VPN use is discouraged, problematic, and/or restricted with satellite broadband, although available at a price
One-way satellite service requires the use of a modem or other data uplink connection
Satellite dishes are very large. Although most of them employ plastic to reduce weight, they are typically between 80 and 120 cm (30 to 48 inches) in diameter.

Cellular broadband

Cellular phone towers are very widespread, and as cellular networks move to third generation (3G

3G or 3rd generation mobile telecommunications is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 specifications by the International Telecommunication Union...

) networks they can support fast data; using technologies such as EVDO, HSDPA and UMTS

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

Universal Mobile Telecommunications System is a third generation mobile cellular technology for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed by the 3GPP , UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunications Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for...

.

These can give broadband access to the Internet, with a cell phone, with Cardbus, ExpressCard

ExpressCard

ExpressCard is an interface to allow peripheral devices to be connected to a computer, usually a laptop computer. Formerly called NEWCARD, the ExpressCard standard specifies the design of slots built into the computer and of cards which can be inserted into ExpressCard slots. The cards contain...

, or USB

Universal Serial Bus

USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....

cellular modems, or with cellular broadband routers, which allow more than one computer to be connected to the Internet using one cellular connection.

According to the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), "Wireless broadband subscriptions in OECD countries had exceeded half a billion by the end of 2010, an increase of more than 10 percent on June 2010, according to new OECD statistics." In contrast, fixed broadband subscriptions reached 300 million in 2010.

Power-line Internet

This is a new service still in its infancy that may eventually permit broadband Internet data to travel down standard high-voltage power line

Electric power transmission

Electric-power transmission is the bulk transfer of electrical energy, from generating power plants to Electrical substations located near demand centers...

s. However, the system has a number of complex issues, the primary one being that power lines are inherently a very noisy environment. Every time a device turns on or off, it introduces a pop or click into the line. Energy-saving devices often introduce noisy harmonics into the line. The system must be designed to deal with these natural signaling disruptions and work around them.

Broadband over power lines (BPL), also known as Power line communication

Power line communication

Power line communication or power line carrier , also known as power line digital subscriber line , mains communication, power line telecom , power line networking , or broadband over power lines are systems for carrying data on a conductor also used for electric power transmission.A wide range...

, has developed faster in Europe than in the US due to a historical difference in power system design philosophies. Nearly all large power grids transmit power at high voltages in order to reduce transmission losses, then near the customer use step-down transformers to reduce the voltage. Since BPL signals cannot readily pass through transformers, repeaters must be attached to the transformers. In the US, it is common for a small transformer hung from a utility pole to service a single house. In Europe, it is more common for a somewhat larger transformer to service 10 or 100 houses. For delivering power to customers, this difference in design makes little difference, but it means delivering BPL over the power grid of a typical US city will require an order of magnitude more repeaters than would be required in a comparable European city.

Historical "interference" issue

An historical issue was signal strength

Signal strength

In telecommunications, particularly in radio, signal strength refers to the magnitude of the electric field at a reference point that is a significant distance from the transmitting antenna. It may also be referred to as received signal level or field strength. Typically, it is expressed in...

and operating frequency

Frequency

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...

. BPL used frequencies in the 10 to 30 MHz range, which has been used for decades by licensed amateur radio operator

Amateur radio operator

An amateur radio operator is an individual who typically uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other similar individuals on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators have been granted an amateur radio...

s, as well as international shortwave

Shortwave

Shortwave radio refers to the upper MF and all of the HF portion of the radio spectrum, between 1,800–30,000 kHz. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used...

broadcasters and a variety of communications systems (military, aeronautical, etc.). Power lines are unshielded and will act as transmitters for the signals they carry, and have the potential to completely wipe out the usefulness of the 10 to 30 MHz range for shortwave communications purposes, as well as compromising the security of its users.

To respond to that concern, the IEEE P1901

IEEE P1901

The IEEE 1901 working group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers develops standards for high speed power line communications....

standard specifies that all powerline protocols must detect existing usage and avoid interfering with it, and continue to monitor radio interference and back off frequency ranges that appear to be used by analog radio. As the standard was based on the HomePlug AV technology, it is reasonably certain that there is no interference issue, as HomePlug had no such issues when deployed indoors.

Wireless ISP

(See also Cellular Broadband, above)

This typically employs the current low-cost 802.11

IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11 is a set of standards for implementing wireless local area network computer communication in the 2.4, 3.6 and 5 GHz frequency bands. They are created and maintained by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee . The base version of the standard IEEE 802.11-2007 has had subsequent...

Wi-Fi radio systems to link up remote locations over great distances, but can use other higher-power radio communications systems as well.

Traditional 802.11b was licensed for omnidirectional service spanning only 100–150 meters (300–500 ft). By focusing the signal down to a narrow beam with a Yagi antenna

Yagi antenna

A Yagi-Uda array, commonly known simply as a Yagi antenna, is a directional antenna consisting of a driven element and additional parasitic elements...

it can instead operate reliably over a distance of many kilometres (miles), although the technology's line-of-sight requirements hamper connectivity in areas with hilly and heavily foliated terrain. In addition, compared to hard-wired connectivity, there are security risks (unless robust security protocols are enabled); speeds are significantly slower (2 – 50 times slower); and the network can be less stable, due to interference from other wireless devices and networks, weather and line-of-sight problems.

Rural Wireless-ISP installations are typically not commercial in nature and are instead a patchwork of systems built up by hobbyists mounting antennas on radio masts and towers

Radio masts and towers

Radio masts and towers are, typically, tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. They are among the tallest man-made structures...

, agricultural storage silo

Storage silo

A silo is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store grain or fermented feed known as silage. Silos are more commonly used for bulk storage of grain, coal, cement, carbon black, woodchips, food products and sawdust. Three types of silos are in widespread use...

s, very tall trees, or whatever other tall objects are available. There are currently a number of companies that provide this service..

Fiber to the home

By fiber-optic cables connected directly to buildings will deliver broadband speeds up to 100 megabits per second. Australia has already begun rolling out the network over the country using fiber-optic cables to 90 percent of Australian homes, schools and business.

Google has been working for a while on testing their own ultra high-speed fiber-optic system in an attempt to improve the way the average person's internet works. They have formed a google blog about this and asked communities across the country to nominate their towns to test the project. They currently have huge plans for the project. TechCrunch and FoxNews have posted announcements about this project hitting possibly as many as 50,000 people with 1 Gbit/s fiber-optic internet.

Available resources for broadband

It is estimated that 40 % of the world's population has less than US$ 20 per year available to spend on ICT (less than $2 per month). This is the budget people count with to buy all kinds of ICT, including hardware, software, etc. Any broadband viable solution must fit into this budget if this segment of the global population is to be reached. In Mexico, the poorest 20% of the society counts on an estimated US$ 35 per year (US$ 3 per month). In Brazil, the poorest 20% of the population counts with merely US$9 per year to spend on ICT (US$ 0.75 per month).

From Latin America it is known that the borderline between ICT as a necessity good

Necessity good

In economics a necessity good is a type of normal good. Like any other normal good, when income rises, demand increases. But the increase for a necessity good is less than proportional to the rise in income, so the proportion of expenditure on these goods falls as income rises. This observation...

and ICT as a luxury good

Luxury good

Luxury goods are products and services that are not considered essential and associated with affluence.The concept of luxury has been present in various forms since the beginning of civilization. Its role was just as important in ancient western and eastern empires as it is in modern societies...

is roughly around the “magical number” of US$10 per person per month, or US$120 per year. This is the cost ICT people seem to strive for and therefore is generally accepted as a minimum.

Pricing

Traditionally, Internet service providers have used an "unlimited" or flat rate

Flat rate

A flat fee, also referred to as a flat rate or a linear rate, refers to a pricing structure that charges a single fixed fee for a service, regardless of usage. Rarely, it may refer to a rate that does not vary with usage or time of use...

model, with pricing determined by the maximum bitrate chosen by the customer, rather than an hourly charge. With increased consumer demand for streaming content such as video on demand and peer-to-peer file sharing, the use of high bandwidth applications has increased rapidly.

For ISPs who are bandwidth limited, the flat rate pricing model may become unsustainable as demand for bandwidth increases. Fixed costs represent 80-90% of the cost of providing broadband service, and although most ISPs keep their cost secret, the total cost (January 2008) is estimated to be about $0.10 per gigabyte.

Currently some ISPs estimate that about 5% of users consume about 50% of the total bandwidth.

To ensure these high-bandwidth users do not slow down the network, many ISPs have split their users’ bandwidth allocations into 'peak' and 'off peak', encouraging users to download large files late at night.

In order to provide additional high bandwidth pay services without incurring the additional costs of expanding current broadband infrastructure, ISPs are exploring new methods to cap current bandwidth usage by customers.

Some ISPs have begun experimenting with usage-based pricing, notably a Time Warner

Time Warner

Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

test in Beaumont, Texas. The effort to expand usage-based pricing into the Rochester, New York

Rochester, New York

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...

area met with public resistance, however, and was abandoned. In Canada, Rogers Hi-Speed Internet

Rogers Hi-Speed Internet

Rogers Hi-Speed Internet is a broadband Internet service provider in Canada, owned by Rogers Communications. Rogers previously operated under the brand names Rogers@Home, Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet, and Road Runner in Newfoundland...

and Bell Canada

Bell Canada

Bell Canada is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone and DSL Internet services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern territories,...

have imposed bandwidth cap

Bandwidth cap

A bandwidth cap, also known as a bit cap, limits the transfer of a specified amount of data over a period of time. Internet service providers commonly apply a cap when a channel intended to be shared by many users becomes overloaded, or may be overloaded, by a few users...

s on customers.

Worldwide

Approximately 500 million broadband subscribers were in service in 2010.

To promote economic development and reduction of the digital divide

Digital divide

The Digital Divide refers to inequalities between individuals, households, business, and geographic areas at different socioeconomic levels in access to information and communication technologies and Internet connectivity and in the knowledge and skills needed to effectively use the information...

, national broadband plans from around the world

National broadband plans from around the world

Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. The term itself is technology neutral; broadband can be delived by a range of technologies including DSL, LTE or next generation access. This page presents an overview of official Government...

promote the universal availability of affordable broadband connectivity.

Rural broadband provision

One of the great challenges of broadband is to provide service to potential customers in areas of low population density

Population density

Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and particularly to humans...

, such as to farmers, ranchers, and small towns. In cities where the population density is high, it is easier for a service provider to recover equipment costs, but each rural customer may require expensive equipment to get connected. While 63% of Americans had an Internet connection in 2009, that figure was only 46% in rural areas, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Virgin Media

Virgin Media

Virgin Media Inc. is a company which provides fixed and mobile telephone, television and broadband internet services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom...

advertised over 100 towns across the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

"from Cwmbran to Clydebank" that have access to their 100 Mbit/s service.

Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISPs) are rapidly becoming a popular broadband option for rural areas. The technology's line-of-sight requirements may hamper connectivity in some areas with hilly and heavily foliated terrain. However, the Tegola project, a successful pilot in remote Scotland, demonstrates that wireless can be a viable option.

The Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative

Broadband for Rural Nova Scotia initiative

is the only North American program to guarantee access to "100% of civic addresses" in a region. It is based on Motorola Canopy technology. As of Nov. 2011 under 1000 households have reported access problems. Deployment of a new cell network by one Canopy provider (Eastlink

Eastlink

Eastlink may refer to:* EastLink , a toll road in Melbourne, Australia* East-Link , a toll bridge in Dublin, Ireland* EastLink , a communications provider in Canada...

) was expected to provide the alternative of 3G/4G service, possibly at a special unmetered rate, for those harder to serve by Canopy. The Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

provincial government maintained a C$500,000 holdback in trust until all these concerns had been addressed.

Government Broadband Index (gBBi)

The Government Broadband Index report released in January 2011 assesses countries on the basis of government planning, as opposed to current broadband capability. With ambitious targets for both the speed and coverage of next-generation broadband networks, the developed countries of Southeast Asia scored highest in this first government broadband index. Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

is the worst-performing country measured, owing to its relatively low coverage target and drawn-out deployment schedule. Greece also suffers due to the considerable size of its public-funding commitment as a percentage of overall government budget revenues, and because its plan does little to foment competition in the high-speed broadband market.

Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, the country with the highest-profile and most controversial public-sector scheme, also falls in the bottom half of the index, mainly because it is spending a colossal 7.6% of annual government budget revenues on its National Broadband Network

National Broadband Network

The National Broadband Network is a national wholesale-only, open-access data network under development in Australia. Up to one gigabit per second connections are sold to retail service providers , who then sell Internet access and other services to consumers...

. In South Korea

South Korea

The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

, by comparison, the government is spending less than 1% of annual budget revenues to realise its broadband goals, achieving targets by encouraging the private sector to invest in the country's broadband future.

Related technologies

Back-channel
Back-channel
-In telecommunications:A back-channel is typically a low-speed, or less-than-optimal, transmission channel in the opposite direction to the main channel.-In IT Security:...

, a low bandwidth, or less-than-optimal, transmission channel in the opposite direction to the main channel
Baseband
Baseband
In telecommunications and signal processing, baseband is an adjective that describes signals and systems whose range of frequencies is measured from close to 0 hertz to a cut-off frequency, a maximum bandwidth or highest signal frequency; it is sometimes used as a noun for a band of frequencies...
Fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication
Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of light through an optical fiber. The light forms an electromagnetic carrier wave that is modulated to carry information...
List of device bandwidths
Local loop
Local loop
In telephony, the local loop is the physical link or circuit that connects from the demarcation point of the customer premises to the edge of the carrier or telecommunications service provider's network...
Narrowband
Narrowband
In radio, narrowband describes a channel in which the bandwidth of the message does not significantly exceed the channel's coherence bandwidth. It is a common misconception that narrowband refers to a channel which occupies only a "small" amount of space on the radio spectrum.The opposite of...
Public switched telephone network
Public switched telephone network
The public switched telephone network is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks. It consists of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all inter-connected by...

(PSTN)
Residential gateway
Residential gateway
A residential gateway is a home networking device, used as a gateway to connect devices in the home to the Internet or other WAN.It is an umbrella term, used to cover multi-function networking computer appliances used in homes, which may combine a DSL or cable modem, a firewall, a consumer-grade...
Mobile broadband
Mobile Broadband
Mobile broadband is the marketing term for wireless Internet access through a portable modem, mobile phone or other mobile device.-Description:...
Free-space optical communication
Free-space optical communication
Free-space optical communication is an optical communication technology that uses light propagating in free space to transmit data for telecommunications or computer networking."Free space" means air, outer space, vacuum, or something similar...

Broadband implementations and standards

Digital Subscriber Line
Digital Subscriber Line
Digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that provides digital data transmission over the wires of a local telephone network. DSL originally stood for digital subscriber loop. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line ,...

(DSL), digital data transmission over the wires used in the local loop of a telephone network
Local Multipoint Distribution Service
Local Multipoint Distribution Service
LMDS is a broadband wireless access technology originally designed for digital television transmission . It was conceived as a fixed wireless, point-to-multipoint technology for utilization in the last mile....

, broadband wireless access technology that uses microwave signals operating between the 26 GHz and 29 GHz bands
WiMAX
WiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...

, a standards-based wireless technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances
Other wireless technologies, including IEEE standards (802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11a) and many proprietary wireless protocols. In 2008, with WiMAX
WiMAX
WiMAX is a communication technology for wirelessly delivering high-speed Internet service to large geographical areas. The 2005 WiMAX revision provided bit rates up to 40 Mbit/s with the 2011 update up to 1 Gbit/s for fixed stations...

still at the top of the learning curve in terms of price, these technologies dominate the market for fixed wireless
Fixed wireless
Fixed wireless is the operation of wireless devices or systems used to connect two fixed locations with a radio or other wireless link, such as laser bridge. Usually, fixed wireless is part of a wireless LAN infrastructure. The purpose of a fixed wireless link is to enable data communications...

broadband.
- Proprietary technologies such as Motorola Canopy have had particular success in penetrating rural markets hard to reach with Wi-Fi or WiMax.
Power line communication
Power line communication
Power line communication or power line carrier , also known as power line digital subscriber line , mains communication, power line telecom , power line networking , or broadband over power lines are systems for carrying data on a conductor also used for electric power transmission.A wide range...

, wireline technology using the current electricity networks, via the P1901 and older BPL
BPL
BPL may mean:* Bank Pool Loan, a type of loan* Below Poverty Line, an economic indicator* Biopollution Level, a quantitative measure of the magnitude of the biological invasion impact...

-based standards
Cable modem
Cable modem
A cable modem is a type of network bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a HFC and RFoG infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high...

, designed to modulate a data signal over cable television infrastructure
Fiber to the premises, based on fiber-optic cables and associated optical electronics
High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA), a new mobile telephony protocol, sometimes referred to as a 3.5G (or "3½G") technology
Evolution-Data Optimized
Evolution-Data Optimized
Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data only is a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals, typically for broadband Internet access...

(EVDO), is a wireless radio broadband data standard adopted by many CDMA mobile phone service providers
802.20 MBWA (Mobile Broadband Wireless Access)

Wi-Max and 3G/4G technologies in North America are sometimes deployed with usage based billing making them impractical for some main applications.

Satellite Internet access

Satellite Internet access

Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through satellites. The service can be provided to users world-wide through low Earth orbit satellites. Geostationary satellites can offer higher data speeds, but their signals can not reach some polar regions of the world...

is inherently high latency for physical reasons and thus cannot satisfy all definitions of broadband. It is always described by satellite vendors as high speed, evading latency concerns.

Future broadband implementations

Bonded DSL Rings
Bonded DSL Rings
DSL Rings is a telecommunications technology developed by Canadian startup Genesis Technical Systems, based in Calgary. The DSL technology re-uses existing copper telephone network cabling to provide bandwidth of up to 400 Mb/s...

a ring topology at the remote end that enables 400 Mbit/s over existing DSL
White Spaces Coalition a group of technology companies aiming to deliver broadband Internet access via unused analog television frequencies
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access
High-Speed Downlink Packet Access is an enhanced 3G mobile telephony communications protocol in the High-Speed Packet Access family, also dubbed 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity...

Broadband applications

Voice over IP
Voice over IP
Voice over Internet Protocol is a family of technologies, methodologies, communication protocols, and transmission techniques for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol networks, such as the Internet...
Broadband radio
Online shopping
Internet television
Internet television
Internet television is the digital distribution of television content via the Internet...
IPTV
IPTV
Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...
Software as a service
Software as a Service
Software as a service , sometimes referred to as "on-demand software," is a software delivery model in which software and its associated data are hosted centrally and are typically accessed by users using a thin client, normally using a web browser over the Internet.SaaS has become a common...

General

Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
Telecommunications network
Telecommunications network
A telecommunications network is a collection of terminals, links and nodes which connect together to enable telecommunication between users of the terminals. Networks may use circuit switching or message switching. Each terminal in the network must have a unique address so messages or connections...
World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
Broadband mapping in the United States
Broadband mapping in the United States
Broadband mapping in the United States are efforts to describe geographically how Internet access service from telephone and cable TV companies is available in terms of available speed and price. Mapping has been done on the national as well as the state level...
Global Internet usage
Global internet usage
Global Internet usage provides information on the number of people who use the Internet by language, nationality, geography, etc.-Languages used on the Internet:Most web pages on the Internet are in English....
List of countries by number of Internet users
List of countries by number of broadband Internet users
National broadband plans from around the world
National broadband plans from around the world
Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. The term itself is technology neutral; broadband can be delived by a range of technologies including DSL, LTE or next generation access. This page presents an overview of official Government...

External links

Compare Australia Broadband Plans
Broadband World Forum (International Engineering Consortium)
Broadband gap
European broadband portal
UK broadband Providers
Broadband for UK
US broadband Providers
Corporate vs. Community Internet, AlterNet
AlterNet
AlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...

, June 14, 2005, - on the clash between US cities' attempts to expand municipal broadband
Municipal broadband
Municipal broadband deployments are broadband Internet access services provided either fully or partially by local governments. Common connection technologies include unlicensed wireless , licensed wireless , and fiber-optic...

and corporate attempts to defend their markets
Google - public data: Broadband penetration in Europe
US National Broadband Map
Broadbandlandia

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