Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is offered for sale by an international hierarchy of Internet service providers (ISPs) using various networking technologies. At the retail level, many organizations, including municipal entities, also provide cost-free access to the general public.
Plusnet plc is a British triple play internet service provider (ISP) providing broadband, landline and mobile services. The company was founded in 1997 in Sheffield, England, and became a public limited company (plc) in July 2004 when it was floated on the Alternative Investment Market. On 30 January 2007, Plusnet was acquired by BT Group, but it continues to operate as a separate business. By December 2013, it had over 750,000 customers across the UK.
Fiber to the x or fiber in the loop is a generic term for any broadband network architecture using optical fiber to provide all or part of the local loop used for last mile telecommunications. As fiber optic cables are able to carry much more data than copper cables, especially over long distances, copper telephone networks built in the 20th century are being replaced by fiber.
Telenor Pakistan (Pvt.) Limited is the second largest cellular & digital services provider in Pakistan owned by Telenor Group, which is an international provider of voice, data, content and mobile communication services in 9 markets worldwide in Scandinavia and Asia. Telenor started out as a public company in 1855. Khurrum Ashfaque is the CEO of Telenor Pakistan as of August 2023.
Free S.A.S. is a French telecommunications company, subsidiary of Iliad S.A. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications to consumers in France. Its head office is in the 8th arrondissement of Paris and it is the second-largest ISP in France.
Internet in Brazil was launched in 1988. In 2011 Brazil ranked fifth in the world with nearly 89 million Internet users, 45% of the population. In March 2022, Brazil ranked 33rd in the Ookla Broadband Ranking, with a median fixed broadband speed of 90 Mbit/s. Also, as per December 2021, Brazil had 41,4 million fixed broadband accesses, most of them FTTH. However, as per 2020, most Brazilians access the Internet through a mobile connection, with more than 200 million mobile internet access.
In an international context Denmark is viewed as a somewhat peculiar country when it comes to internet access. The former state owned telephone company TDC owns the entire last mile infrastructure in terms of copper telephone lines and the vast majority of the coaxial cable infrastructure as well. Even though the Danish telecommunications infrastructure is very heavily dominated by one company, Danish internet customers still enjoy fair prices and a wide availability of different next generation access internet connections in comparison with most other EU countries. Furthermore, TDCs de facto monopoly on last mile infrastructure has come under attack. In the last decade regional power companies have formed national business alliances aimed at implementing FTTH for private and business end users.
The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives.
The Internet in Greece relied on PSTN/ISDN modem dial-up from 1990 until 2003, when ADSL was commercially launched by the incumbent operator OTE. ADSL2+, VDSL2 and GPON are currently the main broadband standards in Greece. It has 3G, 4G, 4G+ and 5G mobile broadband (HSPA) and a more expensive Satellite Internet access. It also has an extensive fiber-optic network throughout the country.
The Internet in Poland was used by 90.4% of households in the country and 98.6% business entities in 2020. In 2023 93.3% household have internet access. 69.5% using fixed broadband, 73,7% using mobile broadband
The Internet in Switzerland has one of the highest penetration rates in Europe.
Broadband Internet in Israel has been available since the late 1990s in theory, but it only became practically accessible to most customers in 2001. By 2008, Israel had become one of the few countries with developed broadband capabilities across two types of infrastructure—cable and DSL—reaching over 95% of the population. Actual broadband market penetration stands at 77%, ranked 7th in the world. In 2010, Israel was ranked 26th in The Economist's Digital Economy Rankings. In 2022, Israel was ranked first for digital quality of life by Surfshark.
The use of the Internet in Iceland places Iceland among the top countries in the world in terms of Internet deployment and use. 99.68% of Icelanders used in the internet in 2021.
In Romania, there are 18.8 million connections to the Internet. Romania's country code is .ro. The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states. There were over 600 000 domains registered under .ro at the end of 2012.
The Internet in Pakistan has been available since the early 1990s. Pakistan has about 130 million internet users, making it the 7th-largest population of internet users in the world. Information and communications technology (ICT) is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. In 2001 just 1.3% of the population used the Internet. By 2006 this figure had grown to 6.5% and in 2012 to 10.0%. As of July 2021; the percentage of internet users in Pakistan is 54%, which translates into approximately 118 million citizens having access to internet. Inadequate infrastructure is adversely impacting Internet speeds, encompassing technology, available backhaul, and international Internet bandwidth. This is the primary reason why Pakistan's Internet speed lags behind that of neighboring countries and even some less developed nations worldwide.
The deployment of IPv6, the latest version of the Internet Protocol (IP), has been in progress since the mid-2000s. IPv6 was designed as the successor protocol for IPv4 with an expanded addressing space. IPv4, which has been in use since 1982, is in the final stages of exhausting its unallocated address space, but still carries most Internet traffic.
WorldLink Communications is an Internet service provider in Nepal. The nation's largest ISP, it has 900,000 active consumer accounts and 2,000 business accounts, along with approximately 25,000 subscribers to its NET TV IPTV service, and covers 73 of the nation's 77 districts. As of 2023, it has around 700,000 fiber to the home customers and 31% market share in Nepal.
10G-PON is a 2010 computer networking standard for data links, capable of delivering shared Internet access rates up to 10 Gbit/s over existing dark fiber. This is the ITU-T's next generation standard following on from GPON or Gigabit-capable PON. Optical fibre is shared by many subscribers in a network known as FTTx in a way that centralises most of the telecommunications equipment, often displacing copper phone lines that connect premises to the phone exchange. Passive optical network (PON) architecture has become a cost-effective way to meet performance demands in access networks, and sometimes also in large optical local networks for "Fibre-to-the-desk".
Atria Convergence Technologies Limited, branded as ACT, is an Indian telecommunications company headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India. ACT offers fibre to the home (FTTH) services under the brand name "ACT Fibernet" and digital television services under the "ACT Digital" brand. The company provides services in Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
G.fast is a digital subscriber line (DSL) protocol standard for local loops shorter than 500 meters, with performance targets between 100 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s, depending on loop length. High speeds are only achieved over very short loops. Although G.fast was initially designed for loops shorter than 250 meters, Sckipio in early 2015 demonstrated G.fast delivering speeds over 100 Mbit/s at nearly 500 meters and the EU announced a research project.
