How Does Broadband Work?

These days, "broadband" is a word that is thrown around easily in telecommunications and internet lingo, but the average consumer may not have a clear understanding of how broadband works. It's easy to understand why; the technology industry even has trouble defining it clearly. So how does broadband work? The online Webster's dictionary defines broadband as "A class of communication channel capable of supporting a wide range of frequencies, typically from audio up to video frequencies. A broadband channel can carry multiple signals by dividing the total capacity into multiple, independent bandwidth channels, where each channel operates only on a specific range of frequencies." Let's take a look at each part of the definition to understand how broadband works. 

The first part of answering the question 'how does broadband work' is to think about the phrase a "class of communication channel." We can gather from this that it is different from the normal class of communication channel that we use - our regular phone lines. Phone lines, also called baseband lines, normally carry 29.6kbps of analog data when used for voice communications. But with the advent of the internet, people began to demand faster data transmission. A regular, baseband phone line can carry up to 56kbps of data with the help of a high-speed modem, but without additional technology, that is its maximum capacity.

That wasn't nearly fast enough to keep up with the average person's demand for and dependency on the internet, which led to the demand for broadband. So how does broadband work? If you think of a baseband line as having one "channel" to send information, you can think of a broadband line as having multiple channels that you use at the same time. Not only that, but a broadband connection is capable of carrying a wider range and type of frequencies, meaning different types of data. And what it can carry, it carries faster. When you drive on the interstate, what happens when there aren't enough lanes for the number of cars on the road? Everyone is forced to go slower.

The same happens with the internet. Think of your connection to the internet as a tunnel that links your computer to the internet. A regular phone line can allow only a small amount of data to pass through at a time. In comparison, a broadband is a wider (or broader) tunnel, allowing a greater amount of information to pass through your connection at one time. The breadth of this tunnel is called "bandwidth." The more bandwidth you have, the faster you can move data. With broadband service, you can also download files that require a great deal of different types of frequencies as well, such as audio and video files.

This is a partial answer to the question 'how does broadband work,' but the other has to do with the way that broadband services can compress and transmit that data that you're sending. Go back to the cars on the interstate analogy. What if suddenly all of the cars could be miniaturized? What would that do to the traffic jam? Or if they could use all of the space available in the tunnel - above your head, between cars, etc. Broadband technology not only widens the channels you have, but it uses them more efficiently. Meaning you can get more out of the bandwidth that you have. Broadband makes your internet experience faster and more efficient overall.