Broadband Internet the next step ADSL2+

If we look back on the last 12 months, we could say that broadband ADSL connections revolutionized the Internet use in Thailand.

The technology of ADSL is not even available to everybody in Thailand or the technology behind ADSL, is evolving into a faster beast called ADSL2+ which will increase the maximum bandwidth to 24Mbit.

There can be little doubt that ADSL2+, or also called ITU G.992.5, without broadband the internet would be a very slow place indeed.

But delivering broadband raises many issues for the Thai service providers. To get high-speed connections to urban areas means using a city's own phone infrastructure, an infrastructure that can be 100 years old.

Some of the copper expected to deliver high-speed data to our computers may have been around since the telephone was introduced in Thailand, and all of it is based on a technology dreamed up at the turn of the previous century.

"Nowadays we are trying to squeeze 24 megabits per second down a cable that was only designed to carry 3 kilohertz of traffic," explained a technician of a telecom company.

To prove the telecom industry has a sense of humor it has long employed irony in naming it's cabling - called Pots, or Plain Old Telephone System.

ADSL is the term a lot of us who use broadband will know. DSL is Digital Subscriber Line, and that refers to the connection between you and the exchange, and the "A" stands for Asymmetric, which means that you can download data faster than you can upload it.