If you are connected to the internet today, the chances are good that you will be connected via a broadband service. Some people still use dial up services but these are much slower and work via a telephone line. Broadband gives you a faster service and constant access to the internet.
What constitutes a broadband service?
We’ve already mentioned that dial up services rely on a telephone line to connect to the internet. As soon as you ‘dial up’, you cannot use your telephone to make a phone call.
With a broadband service you will find you get a dedicated internet service. It may still be delivered via your normal phone line, but unlike dial up you can still use the phone if you wish.
The defining aspect of a broadband connection is that you get a much higher bandwidth than you would via a dial up service. Bandwidth is the word that describes the amount of data that can be transferred via your internet connection.
Is a broadband connection a lot better than a dial up internet service?
Dial up services are notoriously slow. If you have already made the switch from dial up to broadband you probably remember how surprisingly fast it was when you first tried it.
Let’s say for example that your broadband connection is ten times faster than your average dial up service would be. In simple terms this means you can download data ten times faster than you would have been able to previously. A song that used to take you ten minutes to download could now take around a minute. In practice a faster connection could make it a lot quicker than that.
Bandwidth is measured in the number of bits of information that can be transmitted per second. For instance you might see a service offering up to 50Mb on their broadband connection. This means that up to 50Mb of content can be received per second.
The bottom line is that the faster your broadband service is, the faster you will see web pages load and appear on your screen. You will also be able to download content faster, which is useful if you happen to download a lot from the internet on a regular basis.
If you are not yet connected to the internet (or you are still getting by with a dial up service) you may be considering whether or not it is worth getting broadband. In truth most people are glad they went for the change – it is much faster than you might think!
It can also come in very handy when you have a business to run from home. It simply isn’t practical to have a slow connection that keeps dropping out and ties up your phone line in this situation.
So if you don’t already have broadband, perhaps now is the time to compare broadband packages online and switch.
