Broadband Internet

Abstract
ALMOST two-thirds of chief executives believe broadband connectivity is the most significant immediate factor influencing the way customers will use technology and experience entertainment and communications over the Internet in the future, a new study finds.

BROADBAND local access, in all its forms, would have many times the impact of wireless according to an Ernst & Young report.

Digital Subscriber Line or Broadband has been hailed as the new technology, using existing copper telephone lines that will finally deliver affordable broadband services to a mass market. Some analysts have predicted up to 500 million people worldwide will be using the technology to receive such services as video-on-demand, high-speed Internet, video-conferencing and various other multimedia and e-commerce applications by the end of next year.  

We are talking downloading CD quality music, transferring video clips in real time and playing real time games. Theoretically education, government information, telecommuting, reality TV, and medical consultations should be available everywhere, all the time.

It is possible ADSL or Broadband technology can make this all possible on your own home computer with speeds of up to 20-50 times faster than your conventional modem.

Statistics

An Ernst & Young study finds households currently connected with Broadband access "consume" more than 20 per cent more entertainment time than households without high-speed access.

By 2004, nearly 80 per cent of large companies, compared with 65 per cent today, will have fibre broadband connections to their buildings for Internet and consumer consumption.

Mid-sized businesses, with 100 to 499 employees, are driving demand, with 54 per cent expected to have fibre-optic access by 2004, up 35 per cent on existing levels.

Content packagers will become a pivotal point of value-creation beyond the Internet, with profound implications for the entertainment industry, according to the report.

RESEARCH consultancy IDC predicts there were will be 2.1 million digital signal line (DSL) subscribers and 520,000 cable modem users in Australia by 2004.

An IDC report on faster access technologies says carrier bundling of services will increase dramatically, with the killer application being voice over DSL (VoDSL) if Australia follows global trends.

VoDSL provides always-on high-bandwidth data and inexpensive voice services.

What is ADSL?

ADSL is the acronym for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Asymmetric simply means that the service can download data at much faster rates than sending it upstream

ADSL is a relatively new modem technology that transforms ordinary telephone lines (also know as "twisted copper pair") into high-speed digital lines. It is a member of the xDSL family, a generic name to describe a family of digital subscriber line technologies including ADSL, HDSL, SDSL and VDSL

How does it work?

By connecting an ADSL modem between your telephone line and your computer. This allows the ADSL technology within the modem to send high-speed digital information over your telephone line without interfering with normal telephone operations. You can be surfing the Internet and taking voice calls at the same time without any interference.

Example

With this sort of technology we’re looking at being able to watch say an aerobatic fighter display on your PC…full motion video….select the camera view, say from the pilots point of view…select to see his heart rate and adrenalin rush on the manoeuvres …and even link up with a group of mates ‘on line’ to share the experience…not to mention the facts sheets, other links and even e-commerce application attached to this experience.

(And also take a phone call at the same time?)

Benefits

• You can make & receive telephone calls whilst connected to the Internet.
• You can have it on 24 hrs 7 days a week without any time-based charges.
• There is no need to dial up and dropouts should be reduced.
• It is FAST being 20 to 50 times faster than a conventional conventional modem.

Speed

To give you an idea of the speed, imagine transmitting all 857 pages of Herman Melville’s book Moby Dick. An ADSL system could theoretically transmit this quantity of data in around 2 seconds. A standard modem, probably wouldn’t have even transmitted three pages in the same time,

Some Theoretical Download speeds:

EXAMPLE - download time for a 9MB (72Mbits) file on different line types:

• 25 minutes at 56Kbps (PSTN)
• 10 minutes at 128Kbps (ISDN)
• 48 seconds at 1.5Mbps (ADSL)

To give you a better idea of how big a Megabyte is:

• A floppy disk contains 1.44 MB
• A four minute MP3 music file contains about 4 MB

What are the technical specifications?

This line provides asymmetric transmission of data, with 256Kbits/s –> 1.5Mbit/s downstream (to the user) and up to 256Kbit/s upstream (from the user), depending upon the line length and line/loop condition.

This is many times faster than existing PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) modems (56Kbit/s) and ISDN (64-128 Kbit/s) services. ADSL depends upon advanced digital signal processing and clever algorithms (computer programs) to squeeze so much information through the normal telephone twisted-pair lines. In addition, many advances have been required in transformers, analogue filters, and A/D converters.

On the outside, ADSL looks simple -- transparent synchronous data pipes at various data rates over ordinary telephone lines. On the inside, where all the technology works is an entirely different picture.

Problems

Of late the biggest problem has been that users have lost their connections due to technical problems within Telstra. They have been struggling with broken submarine cables etc now for an extended period of time!

The performance ADSL is very sensitive to the distance from the exchange. The maximum reach of an ADSL service is 3.5 kilometres from the exchange. Reaching beyond these limits will compromise the speeds that ADSL could achieve.

Australia’s existing ADSL service is not always operating efficiently, the technology is sound but its implementation is not always suiting business. The fact that ADSL has had some bad press recently from business users is not a fault of the technology, rather its incorrect implementation.

Corporate users are experiencing ‘brown-outs’. However the brownouts are more likely to be a result of overly subscribed bandwidth rather than technology failures. These customers are most often using a residential service to broadcast data, when they need a business class service. Residential users have different traffic and download patterns to business users.

The contention ratio relates to the nature of ADSL. The broadband data service, which allows high speed Internet access over a standard copper telephone line, is a ‘contended’ service, which means that all customers share the bandwidth allocated to an ISP.

While ADSL is fast the ‘contention ratio’ can determine the actual quality of the connection’s performance. While the more commonly accepted contention ratio for business class Internet services using ADSL is 20:1, residential services typically have 50:1 or higher. If a business ADSL has this ratio, the user’s service may not then be as fast as they expect.

Pricing Disparities

A number of ISPs have gone to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to appeal for the organisation to investigate the different pricing models that abound in the market. Many are competing with Telstra, but are also a customer of theirs.

Problems came about when Tesltra offered its ADSL service in a wholesale package to providers, at the time saying it would not be releasing its own retail ADSL service. When it did, it dramatically changed the pricing models of ADSL.

Some ISPs are charging for retail services that are lower than than they buy wholesale bandwidth, and they want to know why the discrepancies are there.

Some would say ADSL is limited in its reach and puny in upstream bandwidth (because of contention and differing send/receive rates). They would also say it was never meant to be more than stopgap and doesn’t meet the promise held out by our society's leaders: to bring the entire public high-speed connections that allow them to get education, government information, telecommuting, reality TV, and medical consultations anywhere anytime.

Where and when will ADSL be available?
About two years ago Telstra said they had an ambitious program to deploy ADSL capability to 90% of homes and businesses within 2 years. When checking their Web site to check on availability in Orange and Dubbo for instance, they stated they had "no current plans to provide ADSL" in these areas! We are not sure if the new Rural Expansion contract will remedy this at this time.

How much does ADSL Cost?

One supplier had varying plans from about $400 for a 3-month contract and charges of about 19 cents per megabyte download after download limits (eg. 250 Megabytes) had been reached.

Will all my Normal telephone features work with ADSL?
Depending on the type of service most existing telephone features will work as normal. However, ADSL will not be available where some incompatible products such as EasyCall^® Multiple Number or FaxStream Duet™ are already installed.

Will all Internet Service Providers Have ADSL?
Only those that invest in the technology will provide ADSL. There will be potential problems with contention with service providers. This means that whilst you have a large bandwidth from your location to your ISP you will then have to settle for an aggregated or pooled bandwidth from that point over the Internet.

What is involved in an ADSL service qualification check?
Putting aside all the hype, there are many requirements to be met before an ADSL service can be provided. Not all telephone services belonging to an ADSL covered exchange can necessarily have an ADSL service.

A service qualification check or feasibility study will test whether your telephone line will meet the following requirements:

1. Your telephone line must belong to an ADSL enabled exchange.
2. Your home or business must be within 3.5 km from an ADSL exchange.
3. Your telephone line must be a straight PSTN service without any ADSL incompatible equipment such as PABXs, Commanders, OnRamp services, pair gain systems etc.
4. There are no incompatible products associated with your telephone line such as EasyCall® Multiple Number or FaxStream Duet™.

What are the minimum PC hardware requirements?
Your PC should have the following:

• Pentium-class processor
• 32 Mbytes RAM for Windows 95, 64 Mbytes RAM for Windows 98 / Windows NT
• Ethernet Card or USB port
• CD ROM Drive and a 3.5" Hard Disk Drive
• At least 100 Mbytes of Hard Disk space.

I've heard a lot about Cable Modem Services, What's different with ADSL?
There is not much difference between the two technologies from the viewpoint of the end user. Cable modems use Hybrid-Fibre-Coaxial cables to reach your home or business whilst ADSL modems use your ordinary telephone line. Both offer high-speed Internet services. It really depends on whether you live in a cabled area as to whether you will be eligible to be connected to a cable modem service.

Arthur Hissey
Computer Research & Technology
www.crt.net.au