Broadband Communications

The term known as Broadband refers to a telecommunications signal of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal (and the broader the band, the greater the capacity for traffic). The origin for this is in radio systems engineering, but became popularized after MediaOne adopted it as part of a marketing campaign in 1996 to sell their high speed data access. The term Broadband was never formally defined, even though it is used widely and has been the subject of many policy debates, and the FCC "National Broadband Plan".

The Use Of Broadband

In Telecommunication:

Broadband in the telecommunication refers to a signaling method that includes or handles a relatively wide range (or band) of frequency, which may be divided into channels or frequency bins. The wider and broader the bandwidth of a channel, the greater the information-carrying capacity. In radio, a very narrow-band signal will carry Morse code; a broader band will carry speech; a still broader band is required to carry music without losing the high audio frequencies required for realistic sound reproduction. A television signal receiving antenna described as "broadband" may be capable of receiving a wide range of channels; while a single-frequency or Lo-VHF antenna is "narrowband" since it only receives 1 to 5 channels. In process of data communications a digital modem will transmit a data rate of 56 kilobits per seconds (Kbit/s) over a 4 kilohertz wide telephone line (narrowband or voice band). However when the same line is converted to a non- loaded twisted-pair wire (no telephone filters), it becomes hundreds of kilohertz wide (broadband) and can carry several megabits per second (ADSL).

In DSL:

The various types of digital subscriber line (DSL) services are broadband in the sense that digital information is sent over a high-bandwidth channel. These channels are located above  the baseband voice channel on a single pair of wires.