Broadband is a method of connecting to the Internet. It is called broadband as it provides a high-speed Internet connection when compared with older methods of connecting which were generally termed narrowband.

The benefits of broadband are mainly related to the speed of the connection. If you're used to using dial-up Internet access, you will know that webpages generally take 10 seconds or more to load and downloading e-mails can take a few minutes.

With a broadband internet connection all these things happen much more quickly! You will be able to do many things at once with broadband. It is even fast enough to allow several people to use the same Internet connection at once if you have more than one computer and they are networked together.

The faster speed allows you to enjoy many of the more feature rich areas of the Internet such as streaming media including live TV, and radio. Online gamers will generally find their ping is much lower!

The speed of the connection varies based on many different things including where you live and what broadband provider you use. Generally the speed will be in the region of between 512k (512 Kbps) and 10 meg (meg is an abbreviation used to mean Mbps - Megabits per second), although faster connections are possible in some areas.