Bell Labs Cranks Up Copper-Based DSL to 300Mbps
Bell Labs Cranks Up Copper-Based DSL to 300Mbps
Posted 04/22/2010 at 4:59am
| by Paul Lilly
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Fiber optics is the wave of the future, but don't go putting copper-based DSL on life support just yet. Alcatel-Lucent says its research arm, Bell Labs, has managed to push downstream speeds to around 300Mbps over a distance of 400 meters, or 100Mbps over a distance of 1 kilometer. It was able to do this with a new technology called DSL Phantom Mode.
"At its core, DSL Phantom Mode involves the creation of a virtual or 'phantom' channel that supplements the two physical wires that are the standard configuration for copper transmission lines," Alcatel-Lucent said. "Bell Labs’ innovation and the source of DSL Phantom Mode’s dramatic increase in transmission capacity lies in its application of analogue phantom mode technology in combination with industry-standard techniques: vectoring that eliminates interference or 'crosstalk' between copper wires, and bonding that makes it possible to take individual lines and aggregate them."
This could be a huge development for companies like AT&T, which are entrenched in copper. At the same time, other companies, like Qwest, would need to install new equipment in the central office and in consumer homes.
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davzway
April 29, 2010 at 12:24pm
There is a very large audience who don't live in downtown Tampa or major city who won't have fiberoptic available in the next twenty years.. If companies could change the equipment at their main office, and provide a different router box at the home.... Here is one customer who would jump at the chance as nothing isn available past 3mbps for forseeable future and HUGHES Satellite SUCKS besides being crooked to boot.
Unless cost for this 'copper improvement' was terrible... what 's the downside . Folks poo poo on idea likely have 25mbps fiber optic and higher available..
The very wayward son of Frank Leslie Horsley, Lone Pine Creek Ranch, Larimer County, Fort Collins, Colorado, from 1882 give or take a year or two.... Hardway Horsley who loves to gadgets of the 21st Century while living in the 19th.
Trooper_One
April 22, 2010 at 12:31pm
Don't implement it, copper may be good for older infrastructures but it's also good for copper thieves. Unlike power cable, thieves don't need to worry about cutting power - just cut, roll, burn the rubber, and go.
BTW, MPC, why use a tiny little copper roll for the pic? Go to sites like Corning for real pics of copper cable rolls.
ocnier
April 22, 2010 at 6:49am
I still see this as merely a bandaid to a sucking chest wound. Copper has reached its limit. Why pour more money into it. ATT and Comcast are just hurting because Verizon had more vision. To the victor go the spoils.
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