What is broadband?
Broadband in simple terms is much faster internet. The most common type is an upgraded home telephone line called ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line), although it is also possible to get it via cable TV or satellite. ADSL is always connected so needn’t be dialled up each time, and you can make phone calls on the same line while it’s being used.

Internet speed is measured in Kbps, the amount of information transferred per second. A phone dial-up connection is 56k, whereas basic broadband is 512KBps, nearly ten times faster. Yet these days 1MBps (1,000 KBps) and 2MBps (2,000 KBps) are becoming more and more common.

How do you get Broadband?

The majority of the UK has access to ADSL. To set it up your broadband provider will make a request to BT. It takes around a week and you shouldn’t notice any difference to your phone line.

To actually connect, plug your computer into the phone-line via a special ‘broadband modem’.

How does ADSL make the phone-line faster?

With dial-up, the computer's modem converts data into a noise, the phone converts this into electrical signals and they’re returned to noise at the other end for another computer to interpret.

With ADSL the data is more efficiently converted, immediately, into electrical signals, bypassing the sound plus it’s transmitted over a much wider frequency range, so more is carried.

What speed should you choose?

There’s a massive difference between broadband and dial-up. The difference between 512Kbps and the faster broadband speeds comes mainly when downloading large emails, music, streaming video or online gaming – especially if different users connect on one line with different computers.

How much will you use it?

In addition to the standard Unlimited ADSL, there is now a new type of ADSL charging – call Capacity Based Charging (CBC) – which charges on the volume of data used. This is measured in Megabytes, MB, or Gigabytes, GB (1,000 MB). This is nothing to do with the time spent online. Leaving the internet connected doesn’t cost anything, it’s only ‘doing things’ that uses up the bytes.

To put it in perspective, viewing 25 webpages takes very roughly 1MB, so a 1GB monthly limit means roughly 25,000 pages. For those just doing a little web-surfing or downloading e-mails, the limits won’t mean much. Yet downloading music software or videos eats up the data much faster, although even then, only serious downloaders or online gamers will feel an impact. Make sure you choose the right package for you – whether it be unlimited or CBC ADSL….