WHAT IS Broadband? by Diane Ciarloni | photos courtesy of Provided by City Managers
W
e live in a world of ultra-high technology. We use it every day. We use it at work. We use it at home. We use it to clean and to eat and to play and to travel. Empires such as Amazon are built on technology. Some of us aren’t tuned in to just how much we do use it, while others of us are amazed that we can use it since we define ourselves as technologically illiterate.
Anyone doubting our legitimate, deepseated need for all this technology became a believer when COVID-19 rolled across us. Computers. Cell phones. Zoom meetings. Wi-Fi. Everything combined allowed us to function. Our children learned online. We shopped online. We met with our medical doctors online. Technology kept us breathing. Computers were around decades before the advent of the mind-boggling information highway known as the World
Bob Hart 22 | LAKE CITIES LIVING | SEPTEMBER 2020
Wide Web (www). Billions of people wanted to drive on it, to have knowledge with no more effort than tapping words on a keyboard. We all became instant geniuses as soon as we hooked up to the wizard known as Google. Something known as “dial-up” became available to businesses and homes. Computers hooked to phone lines. We dialed a number and waited for a few (or several) minutes for a connection. Sometimes, though, the connection was destroyed by an incoming or outgoing phone call. Fixing the problem meant installing a separate telephone line, dedicated exclusively to use of the Internet.
blessing of social media emerged. Then, one morning, we woke up to something called Broadband.
Broadband literally made the Internet
what it is today. No more dial-up. No more
waiting. No more extra phone line. Use the telephone and Internet simultaneously, if you want. A new world opened.
Wendy Withers
Our desks became cluttered with computers, monitors, modems and routers. Some of us didn’t know what those things did, but we knew we needed them if we intended to stay in touch with Google.
Basically, broadband is a high-speed link
People such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg were driven to make things better and better. The mixed
telephone or cable companies, cell
from an office, school, home or wherever directly to the Internet. It’s always on.
It’s fast and millions of “messages” can
be sent to it, and through it, at the same time. Broadband can be provided by
phone companies or satellite. Generally,
telephone and cable are the most reliable. www.LakeCitiesLiving.com
