The Evolution of Internet Services

I remember back a few years ago, I was still using one of those dial-up internet services. I still have my internet 56k modem. In fact, even before the internet, I started with a 9600 bps modem and I was dialing up local Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). Much of it were gone when the internet boomed in the 90s.

A couple of years ago, probably it was (2003-2005), I once the telephone companies offered their first decent internet service, I jumped in. I think the speed back then was about 384kbps. Still slow compared to today’s standards but hey, it was a huge leap from the old 56k dialup speed.

Today, I got a good dsl connection at about 2Mbps. Not bad but still not the greatest. Even cable companies now offer cable internet so it is no longer the turf of telephone companies. I believe cable internet can deliver services at much higher bandwidth since a typical cable can handle different video channels at the same time in the same cable connection.

The latest I think are the fiber optic connections. With a fiber optic connection, it uses light to send those one’s and zero’s at a faster rate. The speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers per second. Just imagine how many individual “bits” of data can you squeeze in that connection. Plus if you have like 1,000 strands of optic fiber in one cable, that’s huge!

I did some research about a week ago and the country with the fastest internet connection is Korea. They’ve probably laid down some of the best/fastest infrastructure. That’s some big investment. But I guess it’ll pay off since they can do a lot of things faster.