The ultimate broadband speed
Advertorial Feature
Over recent years, broadband has improved considerably. Many more users can now receive cable broadband, which is broadband access over fibre optic cable. In fact, nearly 80 % of households in the UK are able to sign up for cable and these are invariably the best broadband deals available for data hungry users. Don’t believe me? Head to a rate comparison site to compare broadband packages to make sure. Currently, these will give download speeds of 100 Mbps or even 130 Mbps, and in the very near future speeds of 200 Mbps should become available.
Users who are still using ADSL for broadband access have also seen considerable improvements over recent times. It is not at all unusual to be able to achieve download speeds of 25 Mbps. Although these fall far short of the speeds available with cable, they are significantly better than just a few years ago. The reason for the improved ADSL performance is due to the introduction of an advanced ADSL technology called ADL2+. This allows a higher frequency band to be used for data transmission; whilst ADSL2 uses the 1.1 MHz band, ADSL2+ uses the 2.2 MHz band, effectively doubling the data bits than can be transmitted.
It seems on these figures that cable can easily outperform ADSL, but there is still some way for ADSL to go before it hits the ultimate barrier. The latest ADSL technology is vectored VDSL2, which can deliver broadband speeds of 100 Mbps over ordinary copper telephone lines; as fast as can be achieved in standard fibre optic cable. The reason why this is not yet available for consumers is that it is still experimental and currently expensive, but it can potentially be faster to roll out and cheaper to supply rural areas than cable. It will certainly have a role in future broadband services.
Although currently fibre optic cable and vectored VDSL2 over copper are roughly equivalent, there is still a great deal of further speed potential for cable. In 2011, Virgin Media threw down the gauntlet with a download speed of 1.5 Gbps and an upload speed of 150 Mbps, which was then the world record, but that has now been broken by Deutsche Telekom. In March 2012 the German company transmitted data over a long distance at a speed of 400 Gbps, smashing the Virgin record by over two orders of magnitude. The data was transmitted a total distance of 456 miles.
The speed improvements that were achieved by Deutsche Telekom involved refinements to software error correction, and this can be used on existing cable infrastructures. It means that there is no need to replace existing cable. At that speed it is possible to download the equivalent of 25 high definition Blu-ray quality movies in a single second. Already there is talk of rolling out the basic technology, and although it will be at a more modest speed, substantial improvements on conventional cable broadband are anticipated.
It is unlikely that even the Deutsche Telekom record is the ultimate in broadband speed; records are only set to be broken. In perhaps ten to fifteen years, speeds in the order of tens of Gbps is likely to be common place. It will be a different world.
It is always worth running a broadband speed test to check your broadband. Companies often do not provide the full “up to” speeds that they advertise.
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Weather for Luton
Thursday 23 May 2013
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