Broadband is another term for high speed access to the Internet. Before broadband the only option for accessing the internet was through a small device called a modem which plugged into a computer and a telephone line. The computer user would ‘dial-up’ to the internet every time they wanted to look at a website – this would take a minute or so and then tie up the telephone line while they were online. Website take a long time to load using a dial up modem because the amount of information that can travel down the telephone line using this device is small. Using the internet is still possible using a dial-up modem but broadband has come along offering 2 major benefits over using a dial up modem. Firstly broadband is always on – if your computer is turned on then you can go onto the internet straight away. And, secondly, looking at websites is much much faster when using broadband – typically 10 or 20 times faster but it can be up to 150 times faster!!