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Feature Articles
What is Broadband?
 Broadband,
also known as ADSL, transforms the twisted copper pairs of wires between the local
telephone exchange and your telephone socket into a high-speed digital line.
It operates over a normal telephone line, which means
that an existing standard telephone line can be used to send and receive high-speed
digital data and make a normal phone call at the same time.
ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber line.
It is called "asymmetric" because it moves data more quickly from the exchange
to you than vice versa. This makes it ideal for applications where you would typically
receive more data than you transmit, such as use of the World Wide Web and reception
of digital audio/visual material. ADSL is the first generation of Digital Subscriber
Line (DSL) technology.
Think of ADSL in this way when you download a web
site page onto your browser. The request you send the system to download the page
is much smaller than the page itself, so the system is designed to make the most
of available bandwidth to fit in with the way you typically use the Internet.
The high speed Internet signal is carried by two
modems - one at the user end and one in the local exchange. These modems are designed
to exploit the physical transmission capabilities of the copper line to achieve
higher data rates over the line than ever before.
A 'splitter' or Microfilter (which is basically a
filter), one at the user end and one at the exchange end, separates the telephony
signal from the high speed Internet signal. This means that telephone calls can
be made at the same time that data is being sent or received (i.e. a customer
can surf the Internet and still make telephone calls), removing the need for customers
to purchase a second line solely for Internet use, thereby saving money.
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