Alcatel-Lucent’s subsidiary research arm Bell Labs, in the USA has announced that it has achieved downstream transmission speeds of 300 Mbps over distances up to 400 meters using copper lines.
The technology could increase the bandwidth available using existing copper telecom cable. This would be a major boost to incumbents such as BT, France Telecom and others, and delay FTTH roll out of fibre optic cable.
Some in the market believe it will speed the deployment of next generation access networks, through the mixed use of copper and fibre optic cable
the value of existing copper networks and could speed the deployment of next-generation access networks through mixed copper and fibre technologies.
Yet, it will also make incumbent telecom companies think further about commiting to expensive FTTH networks, if they could achieve the same bandwidth and revenue from their existing networks.
Alcatel-Lucent has created a 300Mbps pipe using what it has dubbed “Phantom Mode” technology to create a “phantom” channel in between two physical copper pairs, applying vectoring to eliminate the resultant cross-talk and bonding all three pairs, real and virtual.
This technology may help telecom providers looking to boost bandwidth capacity with their existing copper telecom assets. However, commercial deployments is unlikely until at least 2012. In the interim, bonding, vectoring, and other technical developments are likely to extend the life of DSL, which is good news for both DSL vendors and consumers. The technologies are not new, but the combination of all three is the key change.
The timeline for the benefits of these DSL developments to reach the market remains a challenge. Bonding trials were held by Alcatel-Lucent in November 2009 and vectoring field trials are scheduled later this year. Meanwhile, AT&T is scheduled to finish its FTTN+VDSL U-verse deployment to 30 million US households by 2011.
As Alcatel-Lucent itself points out, creating a phantom channel is not new; a version of a phantom mode circuit was invented in 1886. DSL bonding and vectoring are technology advances being adopted by other vendors too (Ericsson, for example).
But what Alcatel-Lucent has demonstrated is the impact of combining all three elements. The technology can be extended to multiple pairs, creating multiple phantom channels that would boost existing bandwidth capacity between 50% and 100%, but the most realistic scenario remains the consideration of two copper pairs, which is present in much of the US and Europe. Given the potential bandwidth boost possible, the additional cost of using this technology would be low because it would use existing copper lines.
