The History of Broadband

The internet has been around since the 1980s and gained popularity in the 1990s. Traditionally users accessed the internet using “Dial-Up” which was a system that used modems and connection speeds were incredibly slow.

Typical speeds were 56k which is about 1/20th of today’s 1Mb connection speed. Costs were also comparatively high until penny-a-minute dial up services appeared followed closely by monthly access packages.

Because of the speed, only small amounts of information could be downloaded on to a computer and quality pictures and music were only available to the very patient users. Dial-up internet was also extremely inconvenient as it took up full use of the telephone wire. Hence people either got little use from the internet or had to install a separate phone line to use the internet from.

ISDN was the next development but this tended to be for businesses rather than the home user although BT did provide an ISDN service called Home Highway until February 2007. This at least allowed users to get aconsistent 64k connection and a separate telephone line for making calls whilst using the internet.

Then Broadband breathed new life into the internet early in to the new millennium. Prices were comparable to the dial-up costs that it replaced but the speeds – generally around 512k - were 10 X faster than dial up. This was a significant improvement and the content on the internet became richer allowing users to access music and video that was previously inaccessible.

Since then speed and content has gone from strength to strength by giving internet users faster and faster connection speeds allowing downloads to include films and Television (IPTV)Couple this with the falling price of broadband and the take-up has continued be high.

With mobile devices broadband has expanded into everyday life and exposure to it has become easier and with current plans to include it in most public areas and even on traind for free it is likely to explode in the next few years.