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Digital Subscriber Line (or sometimes
Loop), a broadband technology used to connect computers to the
internet. Dsl services are designed to improve bandwidth
connections over ordinary copper phone lines. There are a number of variants,
each with a different initial reflecting differences in the volume and
direction of the data being transmitted, so it is sometimes known
generically as xdsl. The best known variant is adsl, now
becoming widely available in Europe and the United States. The biggest
dsl success story is in South Korea, which had 5.6m subscribers in May
2002 (more than in the United States) thanks to government loans to isps
enabling them to upgrade their equipment and market the services to
subscribers. The UK has been the slowest of the major developed economies to
adopt dsl technologies because of a late start by the incumbent
telecoms company and absurdly high pricing strategies. |
