Types of broadband: what are ADSL, cable and mobile broadband?
There are many different broadband packages available throughout Australia, but essentially they all fall under three main categories: ADSL, cable and wireless mobile broadband.
ADSL broadband
Up until recently, the most commonly encountered means of broadband supply for many consumers has been ADSL (or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) with its main rival currently being cable. You'll find that there are a wealth of ADSL plans available to consumers and these rely on a fixed-line supply that is usually part of the local copper-wire phone network. This in turn is often part of the larger telecommunications network for your area of the country and traditionally makes it the most popular way of accessing the internet in Australia.
A variation on the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line comes in the shape of ADSL2+. This has largely been thanks to the technological advancements that have been happening throughout Australia in recent years. The benefit of ADSL2+ is that it can often deliver much better speeds and has been seen as a viable alternative if the arguably faster cable option is not open to you in your geographical area. Although ADSL2 is quite widely available the extra performance needed for ADSL2+ still relies on your local phone exchange to be suitably equipped. You'll also want to be situated as close to that as is possible in order to gain optimum performance.
Another potential downside to the ADSL2 service is that it can tend to be hindered by high levels of other users trying to tap into the same supply.
Read our buyers' guide to ADSL broadband »
What about Naked DSL?
Naked DSL offers you all of the usual benefits of ADSL services and is essentially the same thing but minus a home telephone connection. Due to the way the telecommunications industry has been changed in recent years, Internet Service Providers can now offer DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) services for a very competitive price and these deals can often appeal to consumers who opt to use their mobile phone rather than a landline-based one. The added bonus of this is that you can make use of VoIP (Voice operated Internet Protocol) services to make calls (often for free) via your Naked DSL internet connection. Naked DSL services aren't available everywhere though, but if you can get ADSL2+ then it's entirely possible you may also be able to tap into Naked DSL too.
The cable broadband alternative
Meanwhile, cable broadband has become very popular thanks to an increasingly powerful network that allows much faster and more efficient broadband to be delivered and often for a very competitive price. The appeal of cable broadband is enhanced by the fact this much of this network utilizes fibre-optic cabling and this regularly provides a noticeably faster connection speed than going down the traditional ADSL route. Cable can also offer a better speed than the best ADSL2+ broadband service that is seen as the beefier brother of traditional ADSL. The downside is that cable is not as widely available as ADSL, but geographical coverage is expanding all the time.
A new fibre-optic network
Thanks to the National Broadband Network initiative, pioneered by the Australian government, it's hoped that a more complete high-speed broadband network will eventually be available throughout the country, as well as Tasmania, over the next few years. This is thanks in the main to fibre-optic technology, which looks likely to eventually supersede the older and less able to deliver copper-wire telephone network that, in many cases, dates back many years.
Mobile broadband options
More recently, however, there has been a huge increase in the popularity of mobile broadband. Improving technology, better mobile networks that offer increased coverage and highly competitive pricing plans have meant that mobile broadband has become the internet supply of choice for countless Australian consumers. This allows you to hook up to online services on the move thanks to a small plug-in device that can be attached to your computer via an available USB slot. Mobile broadband has therefore become a realistic alternative to fixed-line and cable broadband services allowing internet on-the-go. The downside of this freedom is that speeds can be less impressive and more susceptible to interruptions due to fluctuations in the strength of signal and coverage along with the amount of users uploading and downloading content at any given time.
