Despite being only a few decades old, the internet has evolved from a privately used network to one of the most culturally important entities in the world. With rapid developments in technology that have enabled huge increases in accessibility, demand and use of the internet is at an all time high. Data speeds have been increasing globally and with the introduction of fibre optic connections now commercially available, things are only going to get faster.
With access to fibre optic and 4G networks in developed countries increasingly on the rise, older technologies such as ADSL and 3G are rapidly going out of fashion. These new forms of high speed service connections, such as broadband from Virgin Media, are allowing users to access and download large quantities of data in seconds. This is already revolutionizing internet on the move, with people now able to stream movies and music on the move without any interruptions.
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4G
As a wireless service, 4G is widely seen to be the holy grail of mobile internet and is capable of exceeding your average basic internet connection, with speeds varying from 8-30Mbps. The speed and quality obviously depend on your provider and your location, though in general, 4G is allowing people to completely forget about having a home internet connection if they can get a data package that works.
There are still large parts of the UK that don’t have access to even 5mbps internet connections because installing the technology required presents little financial incentives for ISPs. Because 4G signals can be transmitted much further than 3G, rural areas that have been long neglected by internet service providers will now have access to high speed internet without having to fork out thousands of pounds to have fibre optic lines laid down.
Mobile internet use is still heavily regulated by mobile phone providers in order to reduce the loads put on their services. It is still highly debated whether this is a legitimate reason or merely an excuse to charge customers more. However one thing is certain – as 4G coverage increases, data tariffs will undoubtedly decrease in price.
Fibre optic
Fibre optic internet is hailed as the future of the world wide web and will be the fastest form of commercially available internet for the next 10 years. It’s currently available across most major cities in the UK and offers speeds of up to 120mbps+. Virgin Media offer the fastest internet in the UK right now with a 152mbps connection. These types of internet connections allow for incredibly smooth streaming and eye wateringly fast downloads. However, fibre optic is not cheap as far as internet packages go and for the average internet user it could be considered slightly over the top. Obviously, if you love playing computer games and downloading video content, fibre optic will undoubtedly be for you and your friends and family! So find out whether your neighborhood is now fibre optic ready so you can plug into some seriously fast internet and download speeds.
[Recommended reading: Broadband 2000x Faster – and for the same price!]
[Image credit: Bob Oliver, Flickr]
Well we sure have come a long way since the good old dial up days now haven’t we?
For a while I kept seeing internet providers that kept increasing speeds where I live. That seems to have slowed a little the last year or so.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a 100 megabit connection as the industry standard. A 1 gigabit would be great, but I don’t know if that will happen, and if it it does it will be a while yet.
I really don’t have a need for the super speedy connections like those. I rarely do anything that would require it, but when I do it would be nice to download a large file much faster than what I can do now.
1 gigabit days could probably become the norm in the next decade. In fact, optic fibres already have the potential to hit that speed, but we may not have sufficient resources to maintain that pace yet. It’s interesting to observe how far technology is going to advance.
I’m from Italy and when I visited Romania to go for a wedding I was amazed at their internet speed. I connected to the hotel’s wi-fi and I had 40 Mbps connection in a few seconds. If I have more than 10 Mbps in Rome it’s a God send, I’m usually around 8-9. Hope I get to experience faster internet in my lifetime haha…
It’s definitely possible; it’s just a little pricey at the moment. Given the potential of Internet technology, exceeding 10mbps is very plausible within the next decade; you will undoubtedly get to enjoy it.
Does anyone really notice a difference with faster speeds? I just received an upgrade from our 30 mbps speeds to 105 mbps and I am not seeing much difference. Where does the difference in speed lie?
Speed also depends on the location and quality of the host servers that you are downloading from. If the host is located far from your region and uses an old pentium processor server, then you are going pretty much the fastest that you can. Try connecting with more reputable sites and see if it is any different.
Oh dear, I am old enough that dial-up can still be remembered as a recent memory.
I live rurally and speeds are not fabulous but they are okay as long as we make sure we are not all on at once, which is hard when there are 6 of us in this house.
I am hoping eventually that Fibre optic will become more affordable and more accessible in the near future, before all my children get old enough to be online.
Increasingly, more places are upgrading to fibre optic cables. Once there is adequate area covered by fibre optic infrastructure, more competing companies will likely enter this industry and bring the prices down. Perhaps, it’d be nice to let them experience good old broadband beforehand so they can better appreciate the power of fibre optics.
Awesome post bro, came here after so many days. How you are doing?
And I also found this post to be quite good. You should have mentioned about Google Fiber it’s currently the fastest ISP in the world and I would love to have them in our country. But it doesn’t seem like something that will happen soon enough!