At last broadband technology is here, bringing dramatically faster computer connections and promising to revolutionise business efficiency, but is the construction industry ready?
At the moment you probably access e-mails and the Internet via a narrowband dial-up modem. If you are lucky you may have an ISDN line, which transfers data twice as quickly across two channels. But for sending large files these methods can be slow and unreliable, which is why it's worth considering the latest in broadband technology.

The broadband most likely to succeed in the UK is ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber line). It offers data transfer speeds around 10 times faster than a dial-up 56 kilobits per second modem, and because the technology is always on, going online is as easy as flicking a light switch. What's more, time spent online is unmetered - subscribers pay a monthly fee for unlimited access.

This month BT starts rolling out ADSL package, BTopenworld. ADSL technology transforms the twisted copper wires between the local telephone exchange and your telephone into a high-speed digital line, offering a download rate of 512Kbps and upload speed of 256Kbps.

The ADSL signal is carried by two modems - one at the user end and one at the BT local exchange. A splitter at each end separates the telephony signal from the BTopenworld signal. This allows users to make calls while surfing the Internet, although phone calls are charged in the usual way.

As the data transfer rates for ADSL are significantly faster than ISDN, more than one user can be connected to a single ADSL line. If four users were downloading from the Internet at the same time, for example, the download rate would fall to approximately 128Kbps for each user, which is as fast as one person using an ISDN line. The likelihood of users all downloading at the same time is slim, so a business could have an ADSL line for approximately 40 employees providing they were light users of the Internet.

For companies with more than 40 employees BT suggests buying a large amount of ADSL capacity direct from them. Companies would then effectively become Internet service providers for their own employees.

Not every business can receive BTopenworld yet. BT exchanges need to be upgraded to handle ADSL, and users cannot be more than 4km from their local exchange. BT claims that by the end of next year it will have increased exchange coverage to 70% of the business population. In the meantime, BT's ISDN option could be a good interim solution, covering 90% of the UK. It's worth noting that because ISDN lines don't carry analogue signals you can't use them for fax machines, dial-up modems or voice traffic. For this you would need BT's BusinessHighway, which includes both analogue and ISDN lines.

But is an industry that's renowned for its reluctance to embrace new technology ready for ADSL? Chris Hudson, product development manager at e-construction company BuildOnline, doesn't think so. "The broadband issue will have to wait. It will be the exception for someone on site to have broadband access," he says. "Most construction companies are small to medium-sized and they work in their own worlds. If you introduced the new technology too quickly they wouldn't know how to operate it."

In the longer term, he concedes that broadband technology will have a role. "ADSL could be the answer. The construction industry thinks that is the way it will go, but other industries will be used as a benchmark first, and as usual the top 10 building companies will get there first."

Alec Smith, operations director at CADWEB, is more positive about ADSL's prospects. "If you send a lot of files via ISDN you'd be stupid not to upgrade to ADSL. You might employ someone for £150 an hour yet for 20 minutes an hour they could be staring at a screen making sure a file has been sent." CADWEB believes that the hours saved using faster data transfer represent a significant saving. Smith calculates that downloading a 10MB file takes half an hour using a dial-up 56Kbps modem, but only two to three minutes via ADSL.

BT isn't the first UK firm planning to offer broadband Internet solutions. Cable operator Telewest launched blueyonder - a hi-speed cable service for residential customers - in March, and will introduce one for business users in September. Telewest also plans to launch an ADSL service in the autumn as does cable operator NTL.

On large projects where information is passed between a few offices, a fixed link that handles voice and data and acts as a wide area network (WAN) may be the best option. These private circuits are secure, reliable, fast - up to 155Mbps with BT's MegaStream - and available in 99% of the UK. "And a WAN can be cheap if the points you're joining lie within the same telephone exchange," says Smith. "It is particularly attractive for projects lasting two years or more, such as Kent's Bluewater shopping centre."

BT's private circuits are named MegaStream for speeds of 2Mbps and over and KiloStream for speeds below 2Mbps. Prices vary according to the data transfer speed and how close the nearest exchange is.

Broadband has yet to capture the imagination of the construction industry. According to John Abbott, contracts manager at Kier, there's a wait and see approach to ADSL. "We are taking a serious look at it but to be honest it will depend on how widely it is adopted." So for the time being traditional dial-up methods and ISDN look like they will prevail but, when ADSL becomes more widely available and competition from other operators forces BT to bring its prices down, expect broadband Britain to become a reality within the construction industry in two to three years.