Get set for a more connected world

As we approach the end of 2011, we can look on a world that has never been more connected.

But 2012 and the years to come look set to bring us even closer together in a true “global village”.

According to the UN, 30% of the planet’s population were online by the end of 2010, compared to a mere 6% at the end of 2000. In a separate study, Cisco found that global data traffic over the internet increased by 41% in 2010, with mobile internet data usage increasing by a massive 159%!

Next generation internet

Ofcom, in its International Communications Market Report, has revealed the great strides that the UK and the rest of the world is taking in getting up to speed with “superfast” broadband.

Superfast broadband describes when the internet service is at or above 30 Mbit/s (megabits per second – there are 8 megabits to 1 megabyte).

The European Commission has set 2020 as the deadline by which superfast broadband must be available to citizens in all EU member states. The challenge is even greater than that though, with the Commission also wanting at 50% of citizens to be experiencing service of 100 Mbit/s. Now that’s what I call super-duper fast broadband!

However, big obstacles must be overcome. A lot of the existing infrastructure facing fixed line broadband is the line itself. Most households run off an ADSL line – the copper phone line. But ADSL can seldom manage speeds of more than 20 Mbit/s – someway off the 30 Mbit/s and 100 Mbit/s targets set out by the European Commission.

To get the UK up to speed, communication providers are hurriedly replacing ADSL lines with fibre-optic cabling. Fibre-optic has the twin advantages of high performance and little loss of performance.

With internet usage growing both in terms of the number of users and the amount of data we are consuming, although great strides are being made, they can’t come fast enough…