The modern age is witnessing the emergence of several innovative communication technologies. ADSL is one such invention. ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, and it helps to convert existing telephone lines into access paths for multimedia and high-speed data communications. Today, ADSL has enabled the transformation of existing public information networks from voice, text and low-resolution graphics to a powerful tool for transmitting multimedia and full-motion video. Not surprisingly, ADSL has unleashed a big revolution in modern homes.

With ADSL, subscribers can now get up to 6 Mbps of data in one direction, or about 832 kbps or more data in both directions. These rates of expansion enable the expansion of existing access capacity by a factor of about 50 or more. And that too, without the need for new cabling. The ADSL circuit uses an ADSL modem on each end of the twisted-pair telephone line. Furthermore, it creates three information channels to function -- a high-speed downstream channel, a medium-speed duplex channel, and a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) or an ISDN channel. Depending on the system, each of these channels can be further submultiplexed to form multiple lower-rate channels. High-speed channels range from 1.5 to 6.1 Mbps, while the duplex rates range varies from 16 to 832 kbps.

The coming years are about to witness a tremendous enhancement of the ADSL. This development will primarily come about as telephone companies and other service providers enter new markets and deliver information in several heavy formats like multimedia and video. Although communication experts are of the opinion that the new broadband cabling will take decades to reach all prospective subscribers, there are chances that the process may succeed only when more and more subscribers are reached in the initial first few years. ADSL will make these new markets viable for telecom companies and application suppliers by taking television, videos, movies, corporate LANs, remote CD-ROMs and the Internet.