5. ADSL Cable

In many towns and cities you may have the option of connecting to the internet using cable (co-axial) rather than a normal telephone line.

Originally co-axial cable was intended to deliver television programmes to customers and indeed this is still the case.

Cable can offer a much higher connection speed than a telephone line as it was designed from the outset to carry high bandwidth material such as televsion programmes. For example some cable operators offer 100Mbps download speed, even faster than fibre-to-the-cabinet.

An internet connection is just another service that the cable company provides alongside television and telephone services running along the same cable.

Usually the cable company has laid fibre-optic cable down to a connection box at the end of the street, then coaxial cable is used to connect each house or flat to the fibre box.

Cable is still asymmetric, offering faster download speed than upload speeds.