Speeding up for broadband

By RICHARD BRADDELL

WELLINGTON - First it was mobile, then it was the internet. The next big thing in telecommunications is going to be broadband or high-speed internet.

While the largest chunk of network voice traffic will migrate to mobile, fixed-wire telecommunications networks will be more than occupied catering for the demand for data traffic generated by the internet.

And that will not be on the 56k dial-up modems available today.

In less than five years, networks will offer services that will make it possible to download a full-length movie not in hours, but in seconds.

As always in telecommunications, the broadband revolution has been led from America, where cable television companies have capitalised on their networks to deliver high data speeds via cable modems.

In New Zealand, Telstra Saturn already offers a cable modem service, delivering data at 512 kbps, off its Wellington network.

Not to be outdone, Telecom rolled out its Jetstream service, based on a relatively new family of "DSL" technologies that enable data to be compressed and delivered at high speeds over ordinary copper telephone lines.

DSL requires relatively good quality copper to work well and service speeds drop off markedly the further the subscriber lives from the exchange, although it can still deliver a very respectable 1.5 mbps 5km out.

Rather than being viewed as a stop-gap until all fibre networks are rolled out, DSL is now being seen as an end in itself with expectations that there could be four or five times more DSL users than those on cable modems by 2005.