Imagine the confusion that would result if every time someone took the Chunnel and
the train had to stop at the end of its run so that each individual on the train could then walk single file through a doorway so as to finish their journey to France. Regardless of how fast the train shot under the channel the delay at the end would govern overall progress. That is precisely what is holding up vastly increased internet speeds in the United Kingdom.
One of the criteria we use in searching for the best broadband deals is speed of download and available bandwidth. Without overall blazing speed from one business or residence to another we dont have a great deal of improvement in service. Companies such as Virgin Media and BT are presently in a feverish race to provide the fastest broadband possible. Ah, but there is the rub. That word possible looms forward. At the present time Virgin Media and BT are concentrating efforts on what is known as fiber to the cabinet technology or FTTC. This allows for almost unlimited speed of data streaming from one central hub to another. Remember our story about the train in the chunnel? The same principle and difficulty applies. Until such time as fibre optic cable delivers your data directly to your door the speed of your broadband connection will be severely limited. Virgin Broadband reviews rarely explain all of this in detail. Considering that Virgin Media touts itself as internet without a phone line needed this seems a bit indeterminate. Most Virgin Media customers are receiving their service by means of a final leg of copper cable. Mind you Virgin is feverishly testing and installing Fibre to the home, but until the demand becomes more wide spread cost of the hardware for super high speed internet will determine the system's growth.
This may allow the leeway required for the main competitor of fibre optics to overtake tethered internet in the race for your broadband dollar. That competitor is mobile broadband and until recently had been running a poor second place to land based internet connections.
Consider this, radio waves such as those used to carry a mobile phone or broadband system signal from one point to another move at the speed of light. That is 300,000 thousand Km per second. This means your download traveling through the air will operate at an unlimited speed. But just as with the Chunnel train and fibre to the cabinet broadband, we have a doorway at each end of the route. For mobile phones and dongles this is the ability to process a signal. Signal processing both for transmission (upload) and reception (download) determines how fast our laptop or desktop computer is allowed to operate. If the devices on each end of the wireless broadband tunnel get faster...they may be able to overtake the speed of fibre optics. However, one note to remember is that the whole point of fibre optics is to use light as a medium of signal transportation and light travels at the speed of well, light.