Academic Broadband

New uses of broadband technology

March 15, 2011 | Uncategorized

Internet has only been around for a decade or so. Before the internet life was different. If you needed to know something you looked it up in an encyclopedia. These books could be upwards of tens of thousands of pages long. Now, with a quick internet search you have almost unlimited information at your fingertips. The original way to access the internet was through a dial up type of connection. A dial up connection is where your computer takes up a phone line and gets speeds up to 56 kbit/s. 56 Kilobits a second is extremely slow and the fact that it took a dedicated land line made Dial Up internet a very annoying thing to have to deal with.With broadband came a whole new way to access the internet. Most of the time broadband does not have to take up phone lines and it can provide speeds more than twice as fast as a dial up connection. The general rule of thumb when it comes to the nomenclature of internet services is this. If it’s slower or at speeds of 56 kbit/s then it is known as dial up. Anything faster is generally known as broadband. The nomenclature depends on where you live, however, as the US defines broadband as 4 mbps or above.Broadband is being used in many different places to make life easier for the general public. The new uses of broadband technology cover the entire world. Hospitals use this internet to get quick access to their patient’s data. Pharmacies use it to get quick access to prescriptions made by the hospitals. Patients use it to know when their prescription is ready from their pharmacy. Government uses broadband, churches are starting to adapt and a variety of other of people and things are all starting to take advantage of the most important technological revolution in the past 100 years.