The internet as we know it has been in existence since the early 1980 and whilst it gained popularity during the nineties its only really took off when broadband technology superseded the existing dial up connection via standard telephone lines. This existing system was painfully slow and made downloading any thing other than small files massively time consuming.

This old technology also meant that the phone line was busy if the user was surfing online so consumers were forced into purchasing a second line. Modern broadband connections can carry vastly more data and massively faster speeds which has lead to an explosion in the volume of downloaded movies, music and other larger files.

With this speed of data transfer many new products are finding a route to market via a broadband connection like movies on demand, online shopping and real time music channels. Because its basically free on most broadband packages to have as much data as you want other business have also sprung up offering VoIP ( voice over internet protocol ) which allows the user to make calls free calling from pc to mobile or land line phones any where in the world.

As the internet improves and speeds up the technology will allow for more and more data and voip will eventually move to an image based calling system were the two ( or more ) callers anywhere in the world will be able see each others faces as if they were chatting in the same room.

A lot has happened since dial up , at that time it took 10-14 seconds to load a page of text and a five minute song would take about 13 minutes compared to 5 or so seconds on an current average 8mb broadband line today. There is no real limit to where broadband speed will go to and 100mb fibre optic lines are already in existence.