A Uk Internet History From Dialup To Broadband

A U.K internet history from dial up to broadband.

In the U.K the internet started to become mainstream amongst the population with its dialup services. To connect to the internet you needed phone modems the first popular speed was 33k amongst the mass of UK population.
You had to 'dial up' to connect the internet. This meant that the phone line could not be used i.e it was either a choice use the phone or the internet. The internet was cripplingly slow and could not really handle rich media content such as videos an large images

Towards the late 90's the speed increased with the introduction of 56k modem which at the time was significantly faster. We then saw the proliferation of dialup providers such as demon ware, free serve amongst others. You had to have a CD to help your register and these bundling of CD's with magazines and newspapers were once a significant technique for internet service providers to get them to signup to their service.

Dial Up modems could not handle a great deal of data, hence the reasons that many companies founded in the first dot com bubble in the late 90's were more suited to todays hyper connected broadband age, as these ideas were too early for their time and the user behaviour was not technologically advance enough yet.

There was an early push in the late 90's with WAP which once again was too early, trying to push the internet through phones. This was in an era of green screens, no 3G and underpowered phones. However in the U.K around 2003 onwards, as broadband began to roll out it started to take off at an ever increasing pace.

BT and Cable and Wireless spend hundreds of millions over the early to mid 2000's to get the broadband infrastructure up to speed.

This move to ISDN which was around the 250k speed and then later to broadband meant that we finally had a platform for the companies such as the ones that were not successful in the first internet wave/bubble in the late 90's could be successful.

Broadband meant the fast streaming and downloading capabilities of media, hence we saw the take off of videos and sharing these on the internet with You Tube. There was also, a number of companies such as You tube which took advantage of this big shift to broadband and the extra capacity and speed it had. For example itunes became successful after 2003 as it provided quick and easy ways for users to download and buy albums etc. something which was too slow with a 56k modem.

This broadband penetration that started to get serious uptake in the mid 2000's also had a big knock on effect for e-commerce. Most e-commerce sites rely on images to display and showcase their products which previously was slow and was note a useful user experience.

It also meant that the internet moved from a nice to have to a must have. It moved the internet from businesses and universities and into the average familys hands. A big driver for people's willingness to pay for broadband was that people wanted to download huge libraries of music through illegal file sharing sites.