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How Broad is Broadband?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the my-band-be-broad-baby dept.

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.

8 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. relative by customs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    well, it's all realative. back in the mid 90's, dual channel ISDN was amazingly fast, and is what everyone wanted for their businesses. now a days, we know that ISDN isn't all that hot, and then the ADSL are to be considered lower end broadband. so how broad is broadband? well for me, right now, it's about 800k/sec sustained download from sunsite. kinda hot.

  2. Is bandwidth all that matters? by WegianWarrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I got ADSL myself, at 376kbs down and 128kbs up. It's not very broad for a broadband (indeed, some argue that ADSL can't be defined as broadband), but I picked it for quite another reason then bandwidth; I'm always on. And when you're used to pay for the minute, that's pretty darn important - I've saving about 50% each month compared to a dial-up connection. I would say that for my use, thats more important than the speed with wich I can D/L over P2P.

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    1. Re:Is bandwidth all that matters? by jhunsake · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The point is that its taken on two meanings, one being the technical meaning assigned by physicists (according to the article) and the other being the commerce meaning based on bandwidth (throughput).

  3. Well.. by BJH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'd say the problem was that it was marketed as high speed broadband. While 128Kbps may technically be broadband, I don't think many people would consider it to be particularly high speed.

  4. not "high speed" internet as they advertised by WiPEOUT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They were advertising "high speed" broadband internet access. It may well be broadband, but it certainly isn't "high speed" broadband.

    "Low speed broadband" would have been more appropriate, but of course, they would've made their offering pale in comparison with real "high speed" broadband, so greed took over and caused them to advertise in a misleading fashion.

  5. Re:Perhaps a New System... by Lord+Ender · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There already is an 'octane' rating for internet access. It is called 'kbps'.

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  6. Re:Perhaps a New System... by T-Ranger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bits or bytes?
    Burstable to that speed with a (monthly) cap or is sustained speed allowed?
    X/sec to where? Their router? Their ftp server in your city? cdrom.com? slashdot.org? Uptime: 5 nines? Whos problem? Customer? Telco? Bandwidth people?
    'Demarc': edge of NSPs router? street? telco demarc? Network side of CPE router? Whole router?
    etc, etc, etc.

  7. Re:Marketting stealing technical definitions by Surak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, broadband *is* the opposite of baseband. Broadband is a modulated analog signal, while baseband is a digital signal.

    Ethernet is baseband. Despite the fact that Ethernet is from 10mbps-1gbps, it is NOT broadband because there's no modulation/demodulation that occurs in the signal.

    Broadband != fast. 56K dialup modem is broadband. ;)

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