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Experiments at Bell Labs show 300Mbps possible over conventional copper twisted-pair DSL
Not content to give up and suckle on the buzzworded cable teat just yet, Bell Labs has just successfully tested a variant of DSL that is capable of up to 800Mbps -- about 100 megabytes per second -- using just a pair of traditional DSL connections. The range is short -- only a few hundred meters -- but the same technology, according to Alcatel-Lucent, is capable of 100Mbps over a 1,000 meter (3,820ft) stretch.
It's early days yet, and DSLReports speculates that the product is at least two years away in real-world terms, but it's definitely proof that the humble, ageing pair of copper wires that extend into billions of homes around the world has some life left!
The other main consideration, for the corporate world at least, is that with improved DSL technology, the laying of cable might not be the most cost-effective solution -- though in the long long term, I doubt few would argue that the future of data transfer must be along optical cables.
For the nerds: the new technology, dubbed 'DSL Phantom Mode', uses a second, supplementary pair of wires over the usual DSL offering. With such massive speeds there's a lot of crosstalk (interference) between the wires -- the third channel is likely used for vectoring as error correction.
Comments
3
Subscribe to commentsTruegodApr 22nd 2010 2:09PM
How viable could this technology be? 1,000 meter is significantly less than a mile. How many houses would be able to take advantage of that?
AnonApr 22nd 2010 11:10PM
"show 300Mbps possible"
"up to 800Mbps"
AnthonyApr 22nd 2010 10:05PM
I seriously believe the only way DSL can survive as a viable technology is to either upgrade lines to the home to fiber optic or to install DSL hubs at the street cabinet level, connected to the neighborhood hubs by fiber optics. Cable, although shared, has a much more significant advantage as in terms of distance. Still, however, fiber optic is the most logical step forward for internet connectivity. Copper wire needs to be replaced.