Introduction

Broadband technologies have been heavily expanding and developing over the past few years with providers trying to find the most economical and quickest ways to bring faster, more reliable services to their millions of users. There are several technologies that are being looked at for future deployment in terms of home delivery of broadband.

The two, most promising (and costly) possibilities involve using fibre optics. Fibre optics are made up of tiny, hair-sized fibres, made of either glass or plastic that carry information in the form of light. Fibre optics can be deployed either directly to the home or to a ?cabinet?. Fibre to the home would involve outfitting every home with fibre optic cables, an expensive endeavour, whereas Fibre to the cabinet is less expensive because it utilizes both fibre optics and copper cables. The fibre optic cables would essentially run into street cabinets and then copper cables would run from the cabinets into homes. Fibre to the home can see speeds between 50Mbps and 100Mbps while Fibre to the cabinet would have a maximum speed of 60Mbps.

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperablity for Microwave Access) is another, relatively new broadband technology making waves in the industry. WiMAX is similar to WiFi but provides data transfer over much larger distances. WiMAX offers speeds up to 70Mbps and can operate up to 50 kilometres away from the source and is currently being planned for a nationwide roll out in Pakistan.

Cable broadband is also a technology looking to improve on speed and usability. Currently Cable broadband (also known as DOCSIS 1.0) can offer speeds up to just 38Mbps however a new system called DOCSIS 3.0 has been tested at up to 120Mbps and higher. Cable broadband is also a good option because it is not dependant on proximity or number of users.