Unlike dial-up, broadband connections are always on.
The speed quoted by a vendor is for the last mile link to the user's home or office. There may or may not be congestion beyond that link.
Broadband connections may be symmetric (up and download speeds are the same) or asymmetric (download speed is greater than upload speed). If a user is providing content as well as consuming it, symmetric service is desirable. This is the case in peer-peer applications in which the user's computer is both a server and a client.
In the future, your home will have a high-speed broadband connection shared by all of your information processing devices, including radios, television sets, and telephones.
For that to happen, we will need fast links to the Internet. The United States has fallen behind many European and Asian nations in broadband connectivity. The reasons for this are complex, having to do with regulation, government policy, housing density, income distribution, etc.
Fiber connectivity is the most likely long-term solution for the home. The key question is, who will own it -- the telephone company, the cable company, the municipal government, or a public/private partnership? A wireless mesh network in which consumers each own a small portion of the infrastructure is an appealing long-shot.
Broadband technologies vary in cost, speed (transmission rate and latency), and availability. Some of those technologies are:
| Technology | US Market share | Medium | Comments |
| Cable | 58.1% | Coaxial cable | Available only at (mostly residential) locations passed by cable. Constrained by local cable company monopolies. |
| DSL | 34.6% | Twisted pair | Digital subscriber line is increasingly available as telephone companies upgrade central offices. More common in Europe and Asia. Service speed varies and is often asymmetrical. Constrained by local telephone monopolies. |
| Terrestrial fixed wireless | 5.3% | Radio | Most common in rural areas where other alternatives are not available; however, there is also a growing municipal network movement. Will get a major boost if WiMAX succeeds in bringing down prices as WiFi has. (Blog post on an early WiMax deployment). |
| Satellite | 1.3% | Radio | Most common in rural areas where other alternatives are not available. High latency restricts use for isochronous applications. |
| Fiber to the home | .7% | Optical fiber | Fiber to the home has sufficient capacity to carry all content and allow the home to serve as well as consume information. The cost of installing fiber to an existing home is approximately $1,000, and telephone and cable companies are beginning to offer the service; however, the service is often restricted and critics charge that it is long overdue and has already been paid for by consumers. |
| Power line | 0% | Copper wire | The standards are now in place for data over power lines, but there has been only pilot deployment. |
Market shares are from In-Stat.
While cable connections lead in the US, DSL is more common in Europe and Asia where housing densities tend to be greater and cable is not as widely available.