What is “Broadband internet access”?
Broadband is a term for high-speed Internet access in your home or business. The connection is typically provided through DSL or cable modem, but it can also be a high-speed business line such as a T1 (or any variation of). There are over 30 million people in the United States with broadband access, and it is available in most areas from providers such as Bellsouth, Comcoast, Verizon, Covad, Earthlink, AT&T, AOL and many more. For maximum sound quality, we recommend connections that are 256Kbps or higher in both directions.
Let’s face it, files are getting larger. Multimedia content is showing up everywhere. Video e-mail and even video conferencing on the Internet are starting to become a very important aspect of daily communications. There is a catch, though. A normal 56k dialup connection doesn’t have the capacity to support all these bandwidth intensive features. Think of trying to supply a major city with water using nothing more than a garden hose. A dial-up modem is like the water hose — there is just no way to force any more data through it. Broadband Internet access offers an effective solution to this problem. For example, many Broadband solutions such as cable modems and xDSL offer speeds in excess of 1 megabit per second. By comparison, a 56k dial-up connection is only .05 megabits per second. The extra breathing room offered by Broadband is enough for any type of current communication and still allows innovative new strategies in the future. Everyone is connecting to the Internet. Businesses