Acronym for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line.
A technology that uses the frequencies above human hearing to send data at high speed to the exchange (a technique also known as FrequencyDivisionMultiplexing, or BroadBand). It's limited in range, the closer you are the faster the top speed you can get, up to 8mbit downstream. (The maximum distance is dictated by the Interleaving). It's Asynchronous because the upstream and downstream rates are different, upstream being much lower than downstream. Much of this is academic however, as most ADSL providers cap your bandwidth anyway. You'll need a special ADSL modem to use ADSL, and need special equipment at the exchange.
Because TelecomNZ owns most of the LocalLoop in NewZealand, you can only get consumer ADSL through them. They call it JetStream. Customers on TelstraClear's network can get a product that used to be called Tempest but is now imaginatively called High Speed Internet.
45 pages link to ADSL:
