Understanding Broadband and the internet
To start with, you need to know what options you have available for broadband before you start looking for internet broadband offers. There are three ways to connect to the internet. These are:
- Fibre Optic Cable
- ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)
- Dial Up
So what is the difference?
Fibre Optic Cable - These are very thin cables (about the width of a human hair) which are made of glass that transmits light. There are hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of these thin fiber optic cables which are bunched together to make a much larger cable.
ADSL - ADSL makes use of your existing copper BT telephone line by splitting the telephone line into two channels:
- High speed data connection (higher frequency)
- Voice (lower frequency)
ADSL allows you use the one line for voice communication as well as connecting to the internet by splitting the line into two unique channels.
Dial Up - A standard copper BT telephone line (also known as POTS or Plain Old Telephone Service line) that uses an analog signal to transmit the audio information to the receiver.
What is the fastest option on offer?
For those of you fortunate to live in a cabelled area, the fastest connection by far is the Fibre Optic Cable. This is currently only available to cable customers although at the time of writting this information, British Telecom (BT) has made a statement to say that they were considerng upgrading their network to be fibre optic so that they too can offer faster speeds.
Not convinced?
Neither were we when we started looking into these facts. On the line we tested, offered by Virgin Media, the bill payer is paying for a 10MB broadband line (with 5.12 MB upload speed). We tested the line and recorded these speeds:
- Download Speed: 9799 Kbps
- Upload Speed: 512 Kbps
Our results show that they get:
Overall, a very impressive results against what is advertised by Virgin Media. What would your results show compared to what your broadband provider is telling you that you get? Maybe you should compare the offers on the internet. Find out now using the free speed test check below provided kindly by SPEEDTEST.NET
