Bill Thompson’s set something off again:
“I have to end with a whinge – as a technical pedant, I’m annoyed at the use of the word broadband for what is really just a moderately fast, always on connection, but I can live with it.
It does not mean fast, but when the marketing droids at the telecoms companies were looking for a word to describe alternatives to dialup connection, it was the unlucky victim and is now a ruined word.
I think this is a shame, and wish we had a better word for a fairly fast, always-on connection. Any suggestions? “
Here’s the thing. Bill’s “former audience” have come up with a great suggestion for rebranding broadband.
Scroll down the bottom of the story, and 8 posts there’s a suggestion by “Daniel, UK”. He suggests that we no longer refer to “broadband” but instead…
“Permanet”
I love that. It describes what’s best about having an always-on connection – being permanently connected to your friends, your community, your favourite sources of information and the potential of the internet; and swipes away the marketing-notion that it’s all about having fat-content pushed at you.
I’m not buying broadband – I want my Permanet!
Thank you “Daniel, UK” whoever you are!
Petafloptimism 
Simple. Elegant. Trademarked.
But we shouldn’t let that stop us!
Broadband is to permanet what
cellular or wireless is to mobile.
Why?
Broadband describes the feature attributes, as does cellular. While permanet and mobile describe the benefits. (I don’t care that it is “cellular” network, I just care that it lets me make calls on the move or away from home).
Same for broadband.
I’ve been using the term ‘mid-band’. That way there’s room to grow to broadband.
Remember the hardware guys don’t retire, they just keep on going.
I disagree, ‘Permanet’ like Intranet is one of those words created to label something that already has a word. In this case although broadband may be an oxymoron, everyone has an idea what you mean. Permanet is close enough in sound and application to PermaNENT that you could end up spending twice as long explaining you mean permaNET, NOT permaNENT when in actuality it is supposed to be a permanent connection you’re discussing… Look at the selection of slashdot.org, because it was hard to convey over the phone: aych tee tee pee colon forward slash forward slash slash dot dot org. 😉
Lets keep things simple, but no simpler than necessary. I agree that the always on factor is what is exciting. Studies have even found that most people prefer always on, to fat pipes. (Some where around 128Kbps was the sweetspot IIRC) But do we really need to make up a new word for it?
I checked someone is already domain squatting on permanet.com…
Azeem has an interesting point on cell vs. mobile, but at least here in the states I find that people say mobile as much as they do cell when describing their phone. Come to think of it, wireless gets a good amount of coverage as well.
Whenever someone describes their home internet access, DSL and Cable-Modem are the most common term I’ve heard.
As far as the trademark, AMD has this tradmark for fault tolerent servers.
http://www.google.com/custom?q=permanet
The cached link shows the highlighted terms.
The following searches show popularity of current terms on google.
adsl = 3,920,000
dsl = 4,160,000
cable modem = 655,000
broadband = 3,980,000
So clearly DSL and the newer ADSL have mindshare for this “always on” label.
Just my two bits.
I just hate losing a useful word to the marketers. Much as I like permanet I think the objections are overwhelming [jargon/trademark]. However I was reading an old paper by Joseph Licklider (see http://www.cnet.com/techtrends/0-1544318-7-1902354.html) and he uses the term wideband – so why don’t we save that for ‘fast’ and try to think of another word for ‘always-on and fast enough’.