Wide Band

The wide band originally referred to an access to Internet access than analogue (56kbps dial in a basic or 128 kbps in basic access ISDN). The concept has changed over time in parallel with technological developments. According to the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. (FCC) is considered as broadband access at speeds equal to or greater than 200 kbps in at least one direction. For the International Telecommunication Union is at the threshold of 2 Mbps.

Depending on the country, there are different technologies: the so-called FTTH (fiber to the home), cable (introduced in principle by TV broadcasting), satellite, ISDN (supported by the traditional telephone network) and others being development.

 The development model of connectivity in each country is different and the decisions of regulators in each country have led to different market structures.The figure is the evolution of Internet access from 1999 to 2007 and you can see how that period increased use of broadband.

Internet is evolving very rapidly and greatly increasing the amount of heavy content (videos, music ...). For this reason, operators are finding in many cases than traditional networks have insufficient capacity to support adequate levels of quality traffic that is beginning to generate and expect the problem to increase over time due to the current rate of growth. Some operators in countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ( OECD ) are upgrading their networks, bringing fiber to the home (FTTH-Fiber-to-the-home) and fiber to the building (FTTB, Fiber-to- the-building). In December 2007, the number of accesses to broadband via fiber and an assumed 9% of total OECD countries, one percentage point from a year earlier. The ADSL technology remained the implode with 60% of broadband lines and the cable holding the second position with 29%.

This development of the technology of optical fiber is not uniform across countries of the OECD. In Japan and South Korea takes 44.5% and 39.2% of broadband connections respectively with this technology, after the spectacular growth of 14.5 points and 15 percentage points respectively in a year and a half, absorb virtually all the growth of this technology, in Europe, with 1% of the connections, just start the renewal of current technology for fiber optics.

In 2007, in the countries of the European Union the percentage of DSL lines over the total broadband accesses stood at 80.3%. Play for technology xDSL deployment costs and the development of ADSL 2 +, higher capacity and supply.

The reasons for preferring broadband connections are not having the phone line busy, the speed of access and the ability to stay connected. And access to new services related to photography, downloading music or videos.