wherefore art thou enhanced broadband?

Enhanced broadband – like normal broadband, only it’s enhanced. But enhanced in what way? Well, our existing excuses for poor broadband are contention ratio & line quality. You may have a 8mb capable line, but you’re probably sharing it with up to 23 or 47 other users…

Enhanced broadband does away with contention ratios. You don’t have to share your broadband with the neighbors. So in terms of speed and consistency of speed, we should all see a drastic improvement. So that begs the question when will this arrive?

For a lot of us, it’s already here… you can see the areas already covered here; http://www.vodafone.ie/df/homebroadband/enhanced/can/

Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t arrive until October-December 2010 so i’ve at least another month to wait. At the minute i’m writing this on my home PC but i’m using my o2 mobile broadband dongle. It’s quicker and more reliable than home, wired “up to 8mb” broadband.

Somehow, i doubt someone will flick a switch and all our broadband woes will go away, but that’s the sales pitch with enhanced broadband. Should i be able to get 8mb consistently, i’ve no doubt my productivity will go up. More speed is always welcome.

These days i’m getting in to the habit of using my netbook alongside my main PC & two monitors at home. I honestly don’t know how i’d cope if i had to go back to using just a laptop. I don’t think i could. It would require much more organization and much less multitasking… which is good in a way but when you’re trying to edit code whilst learn it at the same time, the last thing you want to do is open, close and mess about with multiple windows and tabs all on the one small monitor.

So as far as i’m concerned the more monitors and PCs, the merrier. It allows me to work faster. If i had fast, stable, reliable, unlimited broadband it would give me one less excuse to not work on something that could do with being worked on. The need for speed in 2010 is as great as it’s ever been…