The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal of a greater bandwidth than the standard or original signal. Broadband transmission uses a wide range of frequencies which enables the high speed transfer of data. The bandwidth is shared by numerous signals simultaneously. If I cast my mind back (I’ll say this at the risk of showing my age) to when persons of my generation first used the internet, it would have been on a dial-up connection, which would now seem excessively slow in the fast-paced, modern world of computing. Broadband came in and completely changed all that (much to my relief) and introduced us to a more streamlined and efficient way of browsing. The broader the bandwidth, the greater capacity it has for web traffic, resulting in a much, much faster way of surfing the net. The impact this has had on our lives is not be underestimated. I cannot say I was ever upset to see the back of those days when it would take five minutes to open up an email, although it was a good excuse to go and make a cup of tea, and drink it, and polish off a couple of hobnobs as well whilst you were waiting for that all important message of “Hello, how are you?” to finally materialise.

In case you’re wondering how we got blessed with the wonders of broadband technology, it actually came about through radio systems engineering. It shot to prominence in 1996 when MediaOne unleashed it into the mainstream as part of a marketing campaign to demonstrate their high speed data access. The slogan for it “This is Broadband. This is the Way” proved to be something of a revelation, as it has subsequently shaped our online experience ever since, making the internet a viable and accessible commodity that everybody wants to be part of. It could be said that broadband spearheaded the emergence of the global community that we live in today, where the world is a smaller place and it takes only a split second to communicate from one end of the Earth to the other.

In telecommunications, broadband refers to a signalling method that can handle a wide range of frequencies and can be divided into channels. The wider the bandwidth of the channel, the larger the capacity to carry information. In radio, a narrow bandwidth could only be used to transmit Morse code. A wider bandwidth would be needed to transmit audio signals, say to play music, for instance. In terms of television, an antenna with a low bandwidth would only be able to carry a minimal amount of channels, such as one to five. Terrestrial TV would be a good example of this. A broader bandwidth would have the capacity for many different channels, like Freeview or cable.