2012 may be known as the year that broadband really made it’s way into everyone’s lives. Today, my cellular phone has a faster data connection that that available to me over DSL. More and more people are finding that broadband in their lives makes everything so much easier. Remember when you used to have a pile of cassette tapes or CDs in your car at all times? Still do? Well, more and more people are making themselves much lighter and have a much neater car by using cloud based services for their music.

Cloud based Music

Today there are several leaders within the online music space, primarily Google (with Google Music) and Amazon with their ‘Amazon Cloud Player.” Both services provide an extensive amount of space for the storage of your own music collection which can be easily uploaded to the cloud server. Further, all purchases you make via their store are automatically added to the cloud drive as soon as your purchase is complete.

But none of this would be possible without broadband connectivity. There is no streaming music with a 56k dial-up connection. Plus, now that more and more people are uploading their images to the web for storage as well, whether they use something like FLICKR, Kodak or even Picasa (from Google). I have over 2GB of photos in the cloud. I found out exactly how much I had cause my phone synced with my cloud album, and it took 2GB of bandwidth to get them on the phone.

Getting more bandwidth to your home

In the US, there are many options for broadband connectivity, from rural satellite providers, to the phone companies to cable companies, like Comcast. In the UK, there are a variety of services from BT and O2 Broadband – as well as the mobile carriers. For a change, Europe is not ahead of the US when it comes to mobile connectivity, instead the US is currently leading the race in 4G deployment.

No matter what you want to do today online, it’s going to require more broadband. Are you ready? Do you have the connection you need? If not, it’s time to make the leap to the cloud!