Broadband

Broadband

Explanation 1

This refers to high-speed data transmission in which a single cable can carry a large amount of data at once. The most common types of Internet broadband connections are cable modems (which use the same connection as cable TV) and DSL modems (which use your existing phone line). Because of its multiple channel capacity, broadband has started to replace baseband, the single-channel technology originally used in most computer networks. So now when you see companies like AT&T and SBC pushing those fancy “broadband” ads in your face, you’ll at least know what they are talking about.

Explanation 2

(2) High-speed transmission. The term commonly refers to Internet access via a variety of high-speed networks, including cable, DSL, FiOS, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, 3G, 4G and satellite, all of which are faster than analog dial-up by a huge magnitude.

The term is sometimes used to contrast broadband providers with private networks, such as in the phrase “public broadband works for regular traffic in our branch offices, but we use private lines for our mission critical business.”

A Formal Definition

In early 2015, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) redefined the minimum broadband speed as 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload, updating the FCC’s 2010 rating of 4 and 1 Mbps. The term always referred to a higher-speed connection, but the broadband threshold varied with the times (years ago, the widely deployed 1.5 Mbps T1 line was considered broadband speed). However, with the 2015 definition, more than 50 million rural Americans do not have access to broadband speeds. See broadband router, wireless broadband, T1,cable modem and DSL.
(2-1) Transmitting data by modulating a carrier wave in order to differentiate it from other signals in the air or in a wire. For example, frequency division multiplexing (see FDM) is used to carry hundreds of channels digital TV in a single coaxial cable. In this context, broadband is used in contrast with “baseband,” which refers to data that have not been modulated or multiplexed (see baseband and TDM). However, in most cases, the term “broadband” means high-speed transmission as in definition #1 above.

 

Broadband