24-meg-broadband

Super Fast Broadband up to 24 Meg Broadband.

For current suppliers of 24 meg broadband please use this link: Current 24 Meg Broadband Suppliers

Super-fast home broadband connections now mean we can surf faster and access much richer content than ever before. But how much is enough? And do we really need all that speed? Spencer Kelly investigates.

The internet is a network of pathways and connections, criss-crossing the world. Data flows along them like water along rivers.

But we are all craving more data, and the internet service providers are finding ways to get more and more data down the lines into our homes.

Where older, dial-up connections achieved data rates of thousands of bits, or kilobits, per second, newer broadband connections can reach speeds of millions, or megabits, per second (mbps).

The fastest home broadband connection currently available in the UK is 8 mbps, but this speed is by no means record-breaking.

In South Korea, super-fast broadband is a way of life, and one French service offers 20 mbps.

"By and large, e-mail and web browsing are going as fast now as they'll ever go.

"But super-fast broadband is the next step, what the Americans call a rich-media world, where you don't wait for your movies - they just appear when you want to watch them."

Using high-speed broadband, a 76 MB video file downloads in less than two minutes. Using a dial-up connection, it would have taken more than three hours.In fact, with a fast enough connection, you do not have to download the movie at all.

The Home Choice on-demand movie and music service stores the movie on the provider's servers, and streams it down a broadband connection to your TV in real-time, in full television quality.

Slow flow

Similarly, super-fast broadband will still go slow if the data is not sent fast enough to fill it.

Chris Sterling, of UK Online, explains: "Even though you may have a super-fast broadband connection in your home, if you're downloading from a very remote or a very slow site then that will obviously be a limiting factor."

Even if you are streaming from a very fast site, most web content is currently optimised to suit the more common, slower connection speeds.

For example, the broadband version of Click Online only streams at 225 kbps, leaving most of a super-fast connection redundant.

Upload limitations

Some applications do not just involve receiving data. You have to send it too. Take video conferencing for example, where both parties are sending just as much data as they are receiving.

As Rupert Goodwins says: "The weak link is going to be their upload. "It doesn't matter how fast you can download; you're not getting it faster than they can send it.

"This is true for individuals talking to individuals. It's less true for getting stuff off big websites, because they tend to have very fat pipes to the internet.

"There the bottleneck comes if everyone is trying to get the same file at once."

'Locked' internet

If too many users want the same data at the same time, parts of the internet itself could clog up.

Matt Beal, from BT's 21st Century Network Project, says that exactly what would happen is a little bit hard to predict.

"But, fundamentally, everyone would cease to get anything. You would have a situation where the internet locks up.

"It wouldn't burn out, it wouldn't do anything, it would simply lock up and very few, if any, people would have their needs met."

So even if you have a very fast connection, there could be other factors that limit the speed of your web experience.

What to expect with super-fast broadband:

• Always faster
• Assuming the server at the other end can handle it, downloading files will always be faster.
• Surfing will also be faster, although most websites contain so little data you will only be saving fractions of seconds.

• Limited by upload speeds
• If you are sending as much data as you are receiving, as in video conferencing, internet phone calls, or peer-to-peer file sharing, you are limited by both parties' upload speeds.

• Most web content streams at less than 1 mbps; on-demand TV streams at around 4 mbps
• Do not expect streaming content to fill your connection. Most is optimised for less than the fastest available. Streaming full quality TV will need about 4 mbps.

• HDTV 10-20 mbps, networking unlimited
• High-speed broadband really comes into its own when you are networking several computers in your home - then you can share a very high-speed connection between several users.

In the near future, high-definition television, with higher resolution and much more data, could need 10-20 mbps.

The good news is that the internet is constantly growing, with new cables and optic fibre being laid all the time, as Matt Beal says.

"We have learned to get more and more out of fibre since its introduction in the eighties than we ever thought possible.

"Where fibre used to have less than 1 gbps capacity we now expect that same fibre strand to be able to drive hundreds and hundreds of gbps capacity out of the same fibre.

"That's what interesting, scary and exciting about telecommunications today."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/4497351.stm

Learn more about 24 meg broadband Super Fast Broadband

BT Broadband now comes with our best ever online security packages to help protect you, your PC and your family against identity theft, spam, email viruses, pop-ups and hackers to help ensure you can enjoy the internet in a safe way. And now you could get even faster internet access with download speeds of up to 8Mb. More..

AOL Broadband - Bring the Internet to life with AOL Broadband Gold. Download music, watch your favourite sports + more.AOL is one of the world’s largest and most trusted Internet Services providers. 33 million customers worldwide already connect to the Internet through AOL’s dial-up and Broadband services. More..

Orange Broadband - 8 Meg is Orange’s fastest speed. How fast you can go depends where you live. Join Orange Broadband Plus or Broadband Max and get the fastest speed available now, plus a free upgrade if they can provide quicker speeds to your area. The number of areas that can get 8 Meg is growing. Now most of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Bristol can get it. More..

Are BE the only 24 meg broadband supplier? At present its seems so...

Staggeringly fast broadband from Be gives you up to 24 meg download speeds, 24/7 member support and a free high-specification wireless modem – all from an unbelievable £14 a month.

Be is the first UK Broadband Internet service provider (ISP) to deliver the awesome power of up to 24 meg broadband. With download speeds up to a staggering 24 meg and upload speeds up to a record-breaking 1.3 meg, this is super-fast broadband as you've dreamt it could be: unlimited usage, a free high specification wireless modem and, of course, always-on connection.

It’s the biggest leap since you left dial-up. Harness the power of ADSL2+ technology and experience the future of broadband, today with Be. See it for yourself at BeThere.co.uk

Compare 24 meg broadband suppliers speeds and suppliers below.

Speed up to 8 meg.

Speed up to 8 meg.

Speed up to 8 meg.

Speed up to 10 meg.

Speed up to 8 meg.

Speed up to 8 meg.

Speed up to 10 meg.

Home  | Pipex 24 Meg Broadband  | High Speed Broadband  | Broadband High Speed Internet  | Broadband Internet  |

Super Fast Broadband  | Broadband Internet Deals  |