Explaining Broadband

Broadband access is a vehicle that allows the delivery of an entirely new breed of media services and communications-oriented applications. In the long run, it is these new services and applications that will differentiate broadband from dial-up, or DSL-type Internet access and give consumers a reason for subscribing to broadband. Audio and video are the obvious cornerstones of this coming high-speed revolution. Speedy connections coupled with always-on access will improve the consumer multimedia experience and change the types of business models that are viable in the interactive marketplace. Price will play a key role in adoption and maturation. As use of broadband grows to more than 20 million subscribers by 2004, traditional media companies may uncover opportunities for growth and acquisition in these alternative content categories enabled by the high-speed Internet. Broadband will not replace traditional media formats as they exist today. But it will emerge as a new source of fragmentation, siphoning off enough listeners and viewers to affect established media entities and their long-term growth.

The exponential development of Internet applications and number of users will create a bottleneck in conventional wired bandwidth capabilities in the ‘last-mile' . The bandwidth or “Pipe Size” is defined by the physical limitation of the amount of data flow in these wired systems. Bottlenecks affect network performance by slowing down the flow of information transmitted across networks. TCP/IP connections were originally designed to transmit only text files and the proliferation of bandwidth-intensive transmissions such as high-resolution graphics, audio and video have caused bottlenecks in the process; therefore, the data moves more slowly across networks. WiVo's high-velocity scalable broadband solution defeats the bottlenecks by actually removing the wired boundaries of the ‘last-mile' and delivering symmetrical bandwidth speeds of 1Mbs to over 50Mbs (T1 through DS3) at a price-point not yet seen in the industry.

This is an explanation of the various terms used with bandwidth capacity or "Pipe Size". For additional definitions, please visit the Glossary.

A bit is One, - A byte can be 4,8,10,12,16 depending on the thing we are talking about - The Tele-communications industry uses bits - so we do too. Please never confuse the two. From a PC standpoint 8 bits equal one byte.

A Kilobyte – (Kb) A Kilobyte is 1024 bytes

A Megabyte – (Mb) A Megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes = 1024 kilobytes

A Gigabyte – (Gb) A Gigabyte is 1024 megabytes

T1 or DS-1 - This is the equivalent of 24 phone lines. The capacity is 1.5 million bits per second [1.5Mbps]. The key word is BITS not bytes. Bits are much smaller than bytes.

T2 or DS-2 - This is the equivalent of 4 T1's. The capacity is 6.3 million bits per second [6.3Mbps].

T3 or DS-3 - This is the equivalent of 28 T1's. The capacity is 45 million bits per second [45Mbps].

T4 or DS-4 - This is the equivalnet of 6 T3's. The capacity is 274 million bits per second [274Mbps].

OC-1 - Sometimes called SONET. OC-1 uses ATM switches [as all OC-X does] and runs at 51 million bits per second [51Mbps], and uses Fiber.

OC-3 - This is the equivalent of 155 million bits per second [155Mbps].

OC-12 - 600 million bits per second [622Mbps].

OC-48 - 2.4 gigabits per second [2.4 Gbps]

Frame Relay -A standardized form of fast packet switching in which packets are switched in hardware and at the Data Link layer. Basically dead and gone as far the Internet is concerned. Especially with the bandwidth requirements the way they are. Frame relay runs around 64kbps to 1.5Mbps [64,000 bits per second to 1.5 million bits per second]. Frame Relay is shared line with other people and your bandwidth depends on the current utilization of the line.

ATM - (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is a very expensive switching solution that is used in carry OC-3 and OC-12 lines