3.1 Introduction

The transformation from an analogue telephone network to a digital network in the 1980s has made the transmission of digital information possible across the network to the domestic customer. In the early 1980s, with the development of ISDN, it was possible to transmit data at rates of 64 kbit/s and 128 kbit/s to and from the home, enabling faster and improved communication both for data, speech and facsimile. The personal computer (PC) continued to make major technical advances through the 1990s, increasing in both speed and memory, and also reducing in cost to such a degree that the PC became part of the domestic scene.

The years of growth in the domestic market-place have presented the end user with a terminal capable of receiving and transmitting digital information, but it was the development of the Internet and the user-friendly browser in the 1990s that finally opened the digital information channel to the domestic user. Personal computers now arrive ready equipped with a modem. The data rates are still slow (56 kbit/s) and connections are often time-consuming to set up, typically taking two to three minutes. Using the 64 kbit/s or 128 kbit/s ISDN service improves access times but connecting to the Internet can only be improved by moving to the always- on service.

Developments in ADSL technology in the 1990s led to the video-on-demand trials in Colchester and Ipswich. The trials showed that, by using this emerging technology, it was technically possible for higher data...