The Business Communications Minefield

So as you can see from the above table a 2Mb/sec line is actually equivalent to roughly a 250KB/sec. Note how bits is written compared to bytes ie:

• two megabits per second is written 2Mb/s and
• two megabytes per second is written 2MB/s

ADSL - Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line

First, let’s deal with something many of us already know about – ADSL or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. The traditional ADSL line has or ADSL1 has a maximum speed of 2Mb/s. However if you read the tiny print you would see that this only applies to the downstream speed (ie files you receive).

What is never made clear is that your upstream or upload speed is typically 256Kb/s ie a mere 31KB/s. You can see that if your business sent a lot of email or was constantly uploading large files to the web that this upload speed would just be too inadequate for most businesses. Hence when purchasing an ADSL line it is important that you ask what the upstream speeds are.

Current limitations of ADSL are:-

• Must be enabled in local exchange
• Can only be used over copper,
• Poor Upload Speeds
• at time of writing it has a maximum speed of 8Mb/s
• No SLA

ADSL prices fluctuate but typically cost £180 per annum.