Archive for the ‘Broadband’ Category
Do you Know Your Broadband Speed?
Singer Tina Turner once asked the question, “What’s love got to do with it?” Surely many Internet users find themselves asking a similar important question, “What’s broadband speed got to do with it?” The short answer is: everything. The longer answer may help the reader to understand the significance of broadband speed.
When the Internet first became available, users realized what a vast resource of information was at their fingertips. However, the speed at which information transferred was slow. Innovative designers well understood that the faster information could travel, the more information could be disseminated; thus a whole new science was born. Nowadays, there are whole companies in addition to many entrepreneurs whose sole purpose is to invent ways to make Internet speeds faster.
Currently there are three main ways to obtain high speed broadband service. There is the older copper BT phone line, fiber-optic broadband cable or mobile broadband.
Copper BT phone line: The further data travels from the exchange to your home, the slower the speed becomes.
Fiber-optic broadband: A cable consisting of extremely thin glass strands through which a laser travels to carry data at the speed of light. Not only does fiber optic cable carry data at extremely high speeds, but the speed of transmission is not decreased as distance from the exchange is increased. Fiber-optic broadband is the fastest type of high speed broadband.
Mobile broadband: This does not require a landline. Currently speeds are less than those of fixed line broadband but innovative designers hope to increase speeds to equal those of fixed line broadband.
In the UK, about 65% of the country has fiber-optic broadband availability. Virgin Media is the main supplier of fiber-optic broadband in the UK. Virgin Broadband has a very wide system of optic fiber cables to enable it to service a majority of the UK as opposed to other fiber optic broadband suppliers, such as H20, who only offers broadband in a few areas.
The popularity of high speed services points out how eager Internet users are for speed. It seems that no matter how fast the speed, users want it increased. Technology caters to demand and therefore, broadband speeds are expected to continue to increase in response to demand. If you are curious about the speed of your service, you can perform a broadband speed test quite easily. Simply go to Broadband UK online and choose the Broadband Speed Tester option and your system will be tested at no cost. It only takes a minute to check if your service is as advertised.
In order to get a good idea of what sorts of broadband deals are available, compare broadband service offers from Virgin Broadband and BT Broadband.
Virgin Broadband: 10Mb unlimited broadband, £5 for the first 3 months if taken with size M phone.
BT Broadband: 8Mb, 10 GB Broadband with wireless BT Home Hub 2.0, £7.78
Both of these offers are for tremendously fast service. To get an idea how fast these are, it took 14 seconds to load an average web page with standard 56K dial-up and 8Mb speed allows an average web page to load instantaneously.
When it comes down to it, faster speed equals faster data transfer. The hunger for ever quicker data transfer fuels the drive for ever faster broadband speeds.