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Tuesday, 26 February, 2002, 13:41 GMT
Which broadband technology will win?
![]() Predicting which of the four major kinds of broadband service will triumph in the battle to channel colossal streams of data into your homes and offices is currently exercising some of the finest of hi-tech minds.
Successful marketing will, as usual, be vital but, in the end, technology will tell. Yet there is unlikely to be a single victor, according to Tony Morbin, editor-in-chief of Kagan Euromedia: "It will not be a question of winners and losers. It will be horses for courses and will be different from one country to another." Users in large urban areas will harness the ability of fibre-optic cable to both receive and send huge amounts of data. People in less densely populated areas will rely on DSL technology and in remote areas and undeveloped parts of the world, data will be downloaded from satellites. Wireless technologies will not only enable fast data delivery to those on the move, but also allow people to roam their homes and offices without tripping over tangled cables. BBC News Online spoke to the movers and shakers in the broadband consultancy business to uncover the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four main broadband technologies: DSL, cable, satellite and terrestrial wireless. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) "Asymmetric" DSL (ADSL) is with us now in the UK and other parts of the world. This broadband technology uses new ways of cramming data down existing telephone lines. This is its key advantage, says Mark Cook, internet strategist at UUNet, who claim to be the world's largest internet service provider. "It's pretty much available to all - the infrastructure is there." Current data download rates range from 512 thousand bits per second (Kbps) to two million bits per second (2Mbps) - between nine and 36 times faster than today's standard telephone rate of 56 kbps. This could be improved to 4 Mbps, but not much more and crucially, the maximum rate that data can be sent back at is likely to be 512 Kbps - a marked asymmetry. One of the difficulties is in passing the high frequency signals down the copper cables. The further away you get from the base station, the more likely it is to get degraded. However, installing more base stations, though expensive, could reduce the length of the cable runs and ramp up the speed. A final plus of DSL is that the data transfer rate you are promised is very likely to be delivered as the technology in effect gives you a dedicated line to the exchange.
Cable
Fibre-optic cable's top selling point is its unparalleled capacity - a whopping 10 Mbps for both downloading and sending data is likely to be quite commonplace.
Tony Morbin says: "You won't just be able to download the latest movies, you'll be able to send Granny your latest home video too."
On the downside, laying the fibre-optic cable is expensive and only those who live or work in urban areas are likely to be within striking distance of a cable node. The "last mile" is usually made over copper wires.
Some new homes and offices are being built with ducts so that fibre-optic cable can be fed in at a later date, but the dream of having cable right into many homes is unlikely to be economic, analysts believe.
Luke Ireland is operations director for Evesham.com, who advise on and supply broadband services: "The disadvantage here is that you share a cable, so if everyone in your street is on at the same time, the data transfer rate is slowed."
However, the cable companies would say having too many customers is a nice problem and argue they would just add more nodes.
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