Dial-up and broadband are two ways to connect to the internet. Dial-up uses the existing telephone infrastructure, but is slow and interrupts phone use. Broadband is faster, constant, and doesn’t share a line with a phone. It is more popular and capable of higher speeds. Dial-up has become cheaper, but broadband is necessary for entertainment applications.
Broadband and dial-up are two different methods of connecting to the Internet. With the development of the Internet and the parallel development of computers as valuable business tools and useful home information management tools, connecting to the Internet has become a priority, and dial-up has been a cost-effective way to use the existing telephone infrastructure to make it happen . Broadband connections also operate on the telephone system infrastructure, but use unused telephone lines, thus freeing users from the limitations of dial-up. Broadband and dial-up Internet connections are both available to consumers, but broadband is much more popular.
A dial-up Internet connection requires that digital code sent from a computer be translated into an analog signal that can be sent over the telephone line. When these signals are received by the computer at the other end, they have to be translated from analog code to digital code. The computers at either end of the telephone line must be equipped with special devices called modems to translate to and from the digital code. The fact that computer code is sent as an analog signal limits how quickly the code can be transmitted to the capabilities of the telephone system. In general, the larger the file transmitted, the longer it will take.
The first commercially available modems offered low-speed data rates, and available modems rapidly became faster and more sophisticated until they reached a data rate of 56 kilobits, commonly called 56k. This is theoretically the fastest dial-up connection available due to phone system limitations.
The convenience of using an existing infrastructure, rather than having to build a new one, came with the dual disadvantage of being expensive and time consuming. Each Internet session had to be established separately: it would be possible to access the telephone line, dial the ISP’s telephone number and establish a separate connection for each Internet session. This process was time consuming and the actual data transfer was slow and could be slowed down by a number of variables. For example, signal quality could be degraded by factors such as the distance between the modem and telephone company equipment and the number of subscribers sharing the exchange.
In addition to the time wasted to establish a connection and slow data transfer speeds, dial-up Internet access was inconvenient for those families who had only one telephone line. During an Internet session, they could not make or receive calls; moreover, if someone in the house lifts the telephone handset from the hook, the Internet connection will be interrupted.
Another factor adding to the cost of using the Internet was the fact that users had to pay connection charges to the telephone company for the time they were connected to the Internet, as well as usage charges imposed by their ISP, usually based on on the total connected time. Many users have reported total monthly charges exceeding $250 US Dollars (USD).
Broadband and dial-up internet connections differ in many ways. While both use phone lines, broadband doesn’t share a line with a phone. Users are not deprived of telephone use while using the Internet, and there is no payment to the telephone company for the amount of time spent on an Internet connection. Indeed, with a broadband connection, the Internet connection is constant: once installed, the connection is never interrupted, so the user only has to open a browser window; no time is wasted to establish a connection.
Data rate is another key difference between broadband and dial-up internet connections. While dial-up connections are essentially limited to the 56k provided by most modern dial-up modems, broadband connections are capable of much higher speeds—more than a thousand times faster in some cases. Most games and other entertainment applications can only be used with a broadband connection.
The cost to the consumer of using dial-up has dropped significantly because ISPs first stopped charging for time spent connected to the Internet, then lowered the rates to retain customers. In addition, most users are eligible for flat-rate phone plans, so they don’t pay the phone company more than a flat-rate monthly phone fee.
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