New Technology that brings high speed Internet on old phone lines

3 cheers to a new technology, which promises to provide a whopping gigabit-per-second data speed via age-old twisted-pair copper telephone cable. Keeping in mind that out of 580 million worldwide broadband subscribers, about 55 per cent have copper connections.

 Although we stand in the era of the Fiber-optic cable that leaves the coaxial cables far behind, talking about copper cables is a little outdated. But the new Alcatel-Lucent technology now brings the fiber-like speed to the coaxial. Stefaan Vanhastel, director of marketing for Alcatel-Lucent’s fixed networks business said, “Fiber-to-the-home is obviously the most suitable technology, but you are installing new infrastructure, which requires a new installation in every home. If you want to cover an entire country, it will take 10 or 20 years to do that”.

Alcatel-Lucent uses copper turbo-charging technology, which has developed a new standard known as G.fast that took a preliminary step toward approval two weeks ago from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The technology will reportedly use a greater range of frequencies on copper cables which is because copper is very prone to interference, or “cross talk,” between nearby lines.

G.fast is expected to be eventually deployed on a telephone pole, a wall, or in a manhole. Alternatively, it could also be installed in building basements near fiber terminus to jack up speeds for all the apartments via the telephone cables. The ITU is expected to approve the final standard in 2014, and products are expected to hit the market after 2015.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/technology-news/item/2959-new-technology-that-brings-high-speed-internet-on-old-phone-lines.htmlSource: http://cablequest.org/news/technology-news/item/2959-new-technology-that-brings-high-speed-internet-on-old-phone-lines.html