Worlds Top 3 Broadband Cities

Worlds Top 3 Broadband Cities By Adair Cameron

Broadband technology has improved so much over the last few years that we couldn’t imagine a world without it anymore. This improvement has been seen most notably in the Eastern World where the technology is unmatched. These are the top three broadband cities in the world.

1. Seoul, South Korea

The Capital City of South Korea is home to 10 million people and claims top spot for highest broadband penetration with an impressive 83%. Seoul offers 10Mbit/s broadband connections averaging at £10 per month and some areas offer 100Mbit/s broadband from as little as £15 per month.

Koreans have a fascination with online PC Gaming unlike anywhere else in the world with several TV stations dedicated to the so-called sport. Seoul plays the biggest part and is one of the main reasons for the ever-expanding usage of broadband internet in South Korea.

Current expansion plans include a $439 million project to add wireless internet access to subway trains which has more than 8 million passengers per day.
Broadband service is second to none, and this is why the city takes top spot.

2. Taipei, Taiwan

The Capital City of Taiwan claims top spot for wireless broadband. In 2004 the Mayor of Taipei set out to make the city a “cyber city” and was successful within 3 years. Over $70 million was spent to build a wireless broadband network of more than 20,000 access points with enough range to provide broadband for 90% of the population. This is very impressive considering this wireless network covers an area of 105 square miles. The cost to gain access to the citywide wireless broadband network ranges from £2.50 to £12 per month.

Taipei has to settle for second place due to Seoul’s broadband penetration, but it’s number one in the world for wireless broadband.

3. Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo is the largest metropolitan area in the world and has tens of millions of people connected to broadband. Due to great speeds and availability Tokyo broadband users are able to obtain video web conferencing and VoIP call services with more than 10 million unique IP lines in Tokyo alone. Broadband is fairly cheap too, with the most popular option being 100Mbit/s broadband for £25 per month, although there is a 1Gbit/s broadband option at £45 per month.

By 2010, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone) plans to have spent more than £20 billion in renovations that include plans to provide a ubiquitous cable broadband service for the entire country’s 45 million households.

Therefore, for raw broadband speed and the most amount of users, Tokyo would definitely claim number one spot, but it falls down to third place in the top broadband cities because of a low overall broadband penetration rate.

Six Things You Don't Know About Broadband

Six Things You Don't Know About Broadband By Jerry Niu

Do you know broadband?You may answer yes. I know you may have tried different broadband from several broadband ISPs. You may have installed broadband by yourself several times. You know broadband speed - 2Mb, 8Mb or 24 Mb. You may understand the monthly usage and control your usage. But if you are not a technician in that area, you may not know everything behind these numbers. There is something broadband ISPs will not tell you, or try to write it in a shady corner on their web page.

Let me tell you all these things:

Price:

As more and more ISPs have packages, the price became more and more incomparable. Some packages like Talktalk have call bundles (including anytime package or off-peak package), some are combined with mobile phone contract, and some deals are only available to TV Program subscribers.

A main problem is most deal descriptions don't show whether the price contains the line rental. They may wish customer forget the existence of line rental. But usually, if the deal doesn't tell you that, it means the line rental is not included in the price. If the line rental is included, no ISP will forget to tell you.

Speed:

When we talk to speed, I should tell you broadband ISPs are playing two tricks in words.

The first is the unit. They usually use Mb to describe the speed. Do you think if the speed can reach the theoretic max speed, you can download a song in MP3 format (about 4MB) in half a second? You are tricked. In computer, the size of the file is displayed in MB, which means MegaByte. While in broadband specification, speed is showed in Mb, which means Megabit. 1 MegaByte = 8 Megabit. So 8Mb per second means 1 MB per second.

Another instance I have to emphasise is: Do ask your broadband ISP the maximum speed your phone line can support. Because not all the phone line in UK support 8Mb broadband. Phone lines in some areas can only reach 2Mbps. If your telephone line can't support fast speed, it's a waste of money to buy fast broadband. And I know some ISP don't check it for customers and just open fast broadband for customers no matter real speed the phone line can reach.

Connection Rate:

Now, we know the actually speed broadband ISPs provide to us. However, there is another bad news - you may have to share the bandwidth with other 49 people.
So in Internet rush hour, the real speed may be slow down to 160 Kb a second. That is 20 KB per second.

Wonder why? Because there is a connection rate for broadband! Few broadband ISPs tell customers its connection rate on an explicit place on the web site. But it does affect the speed a lot.

So what is connection rate? Connection rate shows the number of users who share the bandwidth on a single broadband connection between your local exchange and your broadband ISP. Normally, the connection ratios are 50:1 and 20:1.

In UK, the connection rate for home broadband is 50:1, which means you would likely to share your bandwidth with 49 other users, of course, never more than that number. The connection ratio for business broadband is 20:1. It will be much faster in Internet rush hour.

Usage:

Are you annoyed because many providers set a monthly usage cap for broadband, so that you have to check all the time how much you used? Are you looking for broadband with unlimited usage? But you have to consider this instance, if one broadband provider offers unlimited broadband, and customers of this broadband will try and use it all the time. Most providers offer unlimited broadband will have a fair use policy, which actually is led by the connection rate. As there is a connection rate exists, usually 50 people share one line between the exchange and the broadband ISP, so many people will cause the broadband network grind to a halt. This not only makes your broadband speed slows down, but also makes the volume you download decrease largely.

Let me do some calculation, if there are always 40 people (as we have seen, one line may be shared by 50 people) using an 8Mb speed broadband, then the real speed for each person is 200Kb/s. That is 25 KB per second. So you can download as much as 90 MB in one hour, in theory. If you download 12 hour a day, 30 days a month, you can download as much as 32 GB. This number is less than some deals with 40 GB monthly cap. So, don't only looks at the unlimited broadband, even if you download a lot, some deals with large monthly cap provide almost the same volume you can download.

However, a good news is, the monthly download limit or we say monthly usage cap is measured by GB, not Gb. There are no tricks this time.

Contract Length:

Even last year, there is few broadband provider offer broadband with no contract. But now there are several broadband ISP offering no contract broadband, for example, PlusNet, NamesCo, Eclipse.

Those broadband which are so called "no contract broadband" do have contract length. Usually they are one-month rolling contracts. If you don't wish to go on with that broadband provider, call that provider and ask for disconnection. The contract will end at the end of the contract period.

And some providers offer free connection or free modem even if you commit such one-month contract. But if you disconnect within a certain period (usually 12 months), you have to pay for the connection fee and modem fee. So, if you wish to get those broadband, read their terms and conditions carefully.

Availability:

When you check broadband availability of a certain provider, the checker may tell you that that broadband is available in your area. But later, when you plan to install broadband from that provider, you may told that you have to pay more than the price shown on the web site to get that broadband.

What's happened? The reason is some broadband ISP use two types of network. They have their own broadband exchanges in some areas. In some place elsewhere, they provide broadband service by BT network. The cost is different, leading the different price in different areas. As far as I know, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk Broadband have such differential price policy. And Orange also use two networks, but their price are the same.

Broadband Deals

Broadband Deals - Is Contract Broadband for You? By James Dyson

You are sure now that broadband is for you but not on what term or basis you want to have it. Better understanding of the packages and their norms offered by the providers and by calculating them along with you needs and other aspects, you can find out a better option.

Are you flexible with your broadband deal? In the competitive market, you will be hearing of new services launched every month, in which you may find one to be a better deal for yourself. So switching to that provider may sure save your money and for it, your existing broadband connection should allow it without charging in volume for disconnecting the service.

Who should not have a broadband contract? If you want a broadband for your short-term requirement or if you are planning to move your house soon then you can just ignore the contract broadband option at very first.

Moreover, there is lot to benefit from a package having no contract because you can cancel your broadband connection whenever you want and most providers charge only up to the last month of using the service.

Suppose you sign for a long-term contract package and in mid of the contract time, you are forced to leave the service because of any of your reason then you might need to pay the monthly charges for the whole contract time. For example if the service is of 12 months contract then you have to pay charges for 12 months even if you do not make use it.

Broadband on monthly contract In the UK, most of the ISPs ask to sign for a 12 months contract and demand to pay additional charges in case of discontinuing in between. So if you really want ease in having the service then you have to look for other available packages and recognize them before.

Broadband on monthly contract is one that you can sign up. This gives you the flexibility of canceling your service any time with prior one-month notice to the provider. Many ISPs in the UK offer this type of broadband.

Still you need to be well clear with the charges like monthly subscription charges in which providers charge more if you have not signed it for long term. This is mainly done to cover their overall costs. A low priced 12 months contract and 10 months contract under monthly contract basis may cost same. So if you are in need to have a broadband connection for 11 months only, you can sign up for a year time contract instead.

Pay as you go broadband For home users, pay-as-you-go broadband option should be the preferable choice. As home users does not use much for downloads and uploads, the option serves their exact needs as the users pay only for the actual usage which is calculated in terms of uploads and downloads.

Therefore, users who are very much cautious about their spending can have the pay-as-you-go broadband. Some providers even make available the cost capping facility to the users that the users can have a control on their monthly charges.

How well you require being clear with yourself, to have a broadband or not, to that extend you need to be well clear on what fee basis your broadband should be. For the most part, it depends upon the circumstance you are going to be with and planning accordingly will help you in choosing the broadband package for you.

Insight Broadband

Insight Broadband By Alen Wilson

Gone are days when logging on to the World Wide Web was a nightmare, owing to the erratic behavior displayed by the dial-up type of internet access. Now we have a very dependable option and that’s ‘BROADBAND’

Broadband internet connection is growing in prominence as the technology of choice for internet access due to the variety of benefits it gets associated with.

The principal advantages are:

- Super fast speeds

- Always ON type of connection

- Keeps phone lines free

- Reliable

- Scalable

But how does broadband make all this possible? To get an answer to that question we have to look a little deeper into the technological aspects of broadband.

Definition of broadband

Broadband is defined as ‘A mode of data transmission, where multiple pieces of data are sent simultaneously to increase the effective rate of transmission’. In simple terms it means that a number of different pieces of information which may be data, audio or video in nature can be sent simultaneously over a single cable. What that transforms into is that we have optimum utilization of bandwidth. That’s why this way of sending data was termed BROAD-BAND.

Types of broadband

There are a number of types of broadband connections like DSL, CABLE, SATELLITE, WIRELESS and ADSL. The choice with respect to the type of connection to be used entirely depends on the intended use and affordability.

- Digital subscriber line (DSL): A technology ideal for business ensures high speed uploads and downloads.

- CABLE: Broadband through your local cable TV connection.

- SATELLITE: A boon for people living in remote areas.

- WIRELESS: land based wireless broadband.

- Asymmetric digital subscriber line(ADSL): Ideal technology for home users.

As far as application of broadband in home environment is concerned ADSL is widely accepted as the technology of choice.

Accessing broadband

The emergence of broadband technology saw a concurrent surfacing of broadband service providers, these service providers act as the link between you and the World Wide Web. So a reliable broadband service provider is of critical importance, as the quality of his services would decide whether you like broadband or not!

Hardware and software requirements

The hardware requirements would entirely depend on the type of broadband technology you want to get associated with.
No additional software is required to get into the broadband bandwagon, but it would be helpful if you are using a newer version of operating systems.

Limitless functionality

We all have seen the movie ‘STARWARS’ and wondered about the technology they employ and at the end of the movie came out thinking all that as distant imagination. But with broadband many of the so called impossible technologies have come to our door steps. Now we can create virtual private networks, video conference, talk internationally at very cheap rates! Aren’t these the stuffs of which dreams are made of!

Broadband in a sense is challenging us by testing the limits of our imagination. We imagine and it provides!

So let your imagination loose by logging on to the surreal world of BROADBAND. Get in touch with a broadband service provider in your area and give your imagination the wings to fly...

Broadband Review

Broadband Review By Rob Michael

The Uses Of Broadband

Broadband is a high-speed Internet connection that provides a large bandwidth. It is considered a very quick connection. It is an "always-on" type of connection and can transmit data at a much faster rate than your usual dialup connection. Broadband also has the added advantage of not tying up your phone line, which means you can use the both the Internet and telephone at the same time. Broadband can be provided from a variety of sources, including over the top of your phone line as in ADSL or on dedicated line such as Cable or ISDN.

Typically, low-band Internet access is running up to 56kbps using a dial-up modem. Mid-band Internet is described as dialup access that operates at 64kbps or 128kbps. Standard broadband starts at 512kbps, which is about five times faster than dial-up service. Broadband is also available at 1mbps, 1.5mbps and 2.2mbps. There are companies that offer broadband at 4mbps and 8mbps. The maximum possible for cable is around 26mbps and 24mbps for ADSL. These speeds are not sold commercially because the cost to upgrade the telephone lines to be able to transmit data at these speeds is very high.

Downloading and streaming music and video is very quick with broadband. There are a lot of websites now that are designed especially for broadband users. They have intense integrated graphics, flash and video. Broadband is also popular for online gaming. Game consoles like Xbox and PS2 have broadband support included. You can then subscribe to different types of gaming packages from your current ISP, which makes it possible to play Xbox and PS2 games live with other gamers over the Internet. Actually, online PC gaming has been going on since the Internet came into use, but in the past it was difficult to do. Slow and jerky response from your computer made it hard to play, and you always had to keep an eye on the time. Now, with the faster speeds of broadband, it has become much easier and is quickly gaining in popularity. Some games are now being released that require an Internet connection to play.

The growing popularity of broadband has made it necessary for most providers to put a maximum limit on the amount of music, video and other data you can download. This limit can vary greatly, from as low as 1 GB up to 30 GB. Extreme users can get unlimited downloads if they wish. However, exceeding your ISP's download limit usually results in having a limited connection or no connection at all.

One of the possible futures of broadband is Internet Television. The current bandwidth, which is the amount of data you can send and receive, is not wide enough to provide an image that is of comparable quality to that of your standard television. The ever- increasing broadband speeds will make Internet Television a reality. Since you can currently download clips from the shows, music videos and other content you like, it will soon be possible to do it legally in real time. Another use of broadband is online telephony. This is software that allows you to use your computer as a telephone and talk to people from anywhere without any extra cost. It is becoming commonplace, and has a higher quality or recording than a traditional telephone line. With the increase in the speeds of broadband, it may soon replace your television and telephone, and will find its way into every home. The success of broadband is making the Internet a great resource that's easy to use and fun to access for a variety of needs.