How Broad is Broadband?

Photon01 writes "The Register reports that UK ISP NTL have lost, in a ruling that their advertisement of their 128k broadband service as 'High Speed Broadband Internet' is misleading. This is despite it clearly meeting the technical definitions of broadband internet. Apparently 128k broadband is not broad enough." My first cable modem was only 256k. It wasn't blazingly fast but after being stuck on dialup it was heaven, and I imagine 128k wouldn't be so bad for a single household.

Comments

Marketting stealing technical definitions

[grahammm]

This is what comes of marketting departments taking a technical term and redefining it. The opposite of broadband is not narrowband, but baseband (eg the defunct V.35).

What can be done to stop sales and marketting (and politicians) from diluting perfectly good technical terms.

Network Speed Chart

[upt1me]

13.21 Gbps OC-255
10 Gbps OC-192
4.976 Gbps OC-96
2.488 Gbps OC-48, STS-48
1.866 Gbps OC-36
1.244 Gbps OC-24
933.12 Mbps OC-18
622.08 Mbps OC-12, STS-12
466.56 Mbps OC-9
155.52 Mbps OC-3, STS-3
100 Mbps CDDI, FDDI, Fast Ethernet, Category 5 cable
51.84 Mbps OC-1, STS-1
44.736 Mbps T-3, DS-3 North America
34.368 Mbps E-3 Europe
20 Mbps Category 4 cable
16 Mbps Fast Token Ring LANs
10 Mbps Thin Ethernet, category 3 cable, cable modem
8.448 Mbps E-2 Europe
6.312 Mbps T-2, DS-2 North America
6.144 Mbps Standard ADSL downstream
4 Mbps Token Ring LANs
3.152 Mbps DS-1c
2.048 Mbps E-1, DS-1 Europe
1.544 Mbps ADSL, T-1, DS-1 North America
128 Kbps ISDN
64 Kbps DS-0, pulse code modulation
56 Kbps 56flex, U.S. Robotics x2 modems,
33.6 Kbps 56flex, x2 modem communications rate
28.8 Kbps V.34, Rockwell V.Fast Class modems
20 Kbps Level 1 cable, minimum cable data speed
14.4 Kbps V.32bis modem, V.17 fax
9600 bps modem speed circa early 1990s
2400 bps modem speed circa 1980s

Units of Measurement
bit = smallest unit of digital information, i.e. ones & zeros
byte = a set of bits
bps = bits per second
Kbps = kilobits per second =1000 bits per second
Mbps = Million bits per second =1,000,000 bits per second
Gbps = Gigabits per second = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) bits per second
Tbps = Terabits per second = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) bits per second
(Network speed is mesured in 1000 units, memory and storage space in 1024 units)

definition of broadband

[upt1me]

2 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 1.7 :

broadband
adj 1: of or relating to or being a communications network in which
the bandwidth can be divided and shared by multiple
simultaneous signals (as for voice or data or video)
2: responding to or operating at a wide band of frequencies; "a
broadband antenna" [syn: wideband]

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (09 FEB 02) :

broadband

A transmission medium capable of supporting a
wide range of frequencies, typically from audio up to video
frequencies. It can carry multiple signals by dividing the
total capacity of the medium into multiple, independent
bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a
specific range of frequencies.

See also baseband.

(1995-05-09)

Broadband isn't amount of bandwidth

[Jason1729]

It's not how much you have have, it's how you use it.

Broadband means it's a communications channel divided into multiple chunks. Each person on a cablemodem connection uses a different freqency range on the same cable, that makes the cable broadband. The opposite of broadband is baseband, that's where the base comes from in 100BaseT.

If you divide a 2400 baud modem among several users in that way, it can be called broadband too even though each user only have a few hundred bps.

Jason
ProfQuotes

Re:Is bandwidth all that matters?

[Mike Buddha]

Bandwidth makes zero differences when determining if a system is "broadband" or not.

Broadband only refers to the transmission method, not the throughput. All that "broadband" means is that multiple, independant network carriers are multiplexed onto a single wire. That's the definition of "broadband". Your other option is
"baseband".

Anyone who argues that ADSL isn't broadband is either ignorant of the meaning of the word, or ignorant of the technical details of DSL.

The term is stupid, anyway

[Animats]

Originally, the term "broadband" was used to distinguish local area networks with a DC component ("baseband networks", like Ethernet over coax), from systems that had no DC component, like the forgotten Ungermann-Bass LAN and data over cable TV systems.

It's not clear how this term became associated with DSL. Early on, DSL was referred to as "data over voice". (This came from the old "data under voice" system, which sent very low data rate signals for alarms and such over lines also carrying voice, using a frequency band somewhere below 100Hz.) Both of those terms are now obsolete.

DSL has no DC component (you can put it through a capacitor and it works just fine) so technically, it is "broadband". But that has nothing to do with the data rate.

From a regulatory standpoint, what we need is this: It is deceptive advertising to advertise an "up to" speed without showing, with equal or greater prominence, a guaranteed minimum speed. This rule should apply generally to any advertising that specifies some numeric measure of goodness.

UK OFTEL definition of 'broadband'

[M100]

In the UK regulation of comms services is by OFTEL. Their definition of broadband is as follows:

'Broadband' is used in this brief to refer to higher bandwidth, always-on services, offering data rates of 128 kbps and above.

and

This definition of broadband is used by Oftel for the purposes of measuring take-up in order to capture the dynamic range of services available to residential and business consumers that are classed by the industry as broadband. This definition gives Oftel data that is comparable with broadband take-up figures published by other countries in Europe. For the purposes of specific market assessment and definitions of regulatory obligations, different definitions may be appropriate.

You may be interested in this report from OFTEL about the state of takeup of broadband in the UK.