HANDS ON GUIDE

3 - Ultrafast broadband

The instant web

WHAT IS IT?

The point at which accessing the Internet would be as quickly as accessing local storage. We’d define Superfast Broadband as a connection speed that exceeds 1Gbps (although 10 or 100Gbps would illustrate our point even more). 1Gbps is 50 times faster than the fastest commercially available broadband speed today, and 10 times faster than the 100Mbps that is currently considered to be ‘next-generation’ broadband (already under trial in parts of the UK but considered the norm in some other countries, especially those in the Far East such as South Korea and Japan).

With a connection this quick, the Internet will finally be able to completely replace traditional methods of broadcasting. There'd be no need for a TV aerial or satellite dish, as a single connection would be able to receive multiple streams of Blu-ray quality 1080p video simultaneously. While current fast internet connections might be just about able to cope with a single heavily compressed 1080p stream, a much faster connection would mean people in every room in the house could watch HD video streamed from the web, with phones, online games and file transfers could being used simultaneously.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

There's currently only one technology that can provide connections of this speed, and that’s fiber-optic, where pulses of light represent digital bits. The Internet backbone is already constructed from fiber-optic connections and ISPs are currently upgrading their networks so each node and cabinet (which serve multiple users) are connected via fiber-optic links. The problem is that data slows down when it reaches the last few hundred meters, the copper connection between your home and the cabinet. Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is a buzz-phrase being used to describe ISPs (and governments) reaching deep into their pockets to replace the copper-based infrastructure with fiber.

WHAT COULD GET IN THE WAY?

The cost to upgrade the entire UK's communications infrastructure is so high that essentially, nobody wants to pay. Seeing a return on investment may take even longer than completing the upgrade. Fiber-optic connections have been around for years, but so far the upgrade to the network has been delayed because clever engineers find ways to squeeze even more bandwidth from the copper connections that make up the current phone network. In the meantime, ISPs are increasingly capping the amount of data their users can download in an effort to stem bandwidth demand.

Another problem is the issue of how much capacity a server has to send data. Even though we at home would be capable of receiving huge amounts of information, servers would also need faster connections to the Internet’s backbone to keep up. A large site such as YouTube with millions of users downloading video would require a colossal amount of bandwidth and even heavier reliance on server farms. With so much data being pushed around the Internet, the backbone itself might need upgrading before data could arrive at your home at gigabits a second. That solution is also likely to involve fiber-optics.

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