High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device (and the broader the band, the greater the capacity for traffic). Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times. Its origin is in physics, acoustics and radio systems engineering, where it had been used with a meaning similar to wideband. However, the term became popularized through the 1990s as a vague marketing term for Internet access.