“The Last Mile”

In technology terms the “last mile” is not really a mile but typically describes the piece of cable between your house and your local telephone exchange; the term can also be generalised to mean the final connection between supplier equipment and a customer connection.

In current Broadband terms the further away from the telephone exchange your property is the poorer your broadband signal is likely to be (and the slower the speed of downloading files). There are a number of additional factors that can affect the broadband signal and so the type and quality of cabling for the last mile varies wildly.

In the UK much of the existing last mile cabling was originally only anticipated to carry voice calls but many newer builds use better cable. A fibre based last mile connection would be the optimum data carrying mechanism but it is very expensive to install.

This definition has been bought to you by: Jason Slater Technology Blog.