
Alcatel-Lucent sets record of 10 Gbps over traditional copper telephone lines - Deinos
http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2014/alcatel-lucent-sets-new-world-record-broadband-speed-10-gbps-transmission-data-over-traditional
======
mmaunder
The idea here is to provide very high speed from the street (which has fiber)
to the home or office using existing copper - the last 30 meters. Laying fiber
in the street is far easier than running it through buildings where every
building has it's own challenges.

Nice intro to the theory around data transmission limits:
[http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2010/explained-
shannon-0115](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2010/explained-shannon-0115)

~~~
philjohn
That's what BT Infinity is in the UK. I currently get 80Mbps down and 19Mbps
up - which is perfect for offsite backups of family photos etc.

It's also totally unlimited, with no FUP - I've pulled down many hundreds of
gigabytes per month (I work with very large data files and often work from
home) and not heard so much as a peep from them about it.

~~~
vertex-four
Also, they dropped the traffic management on the unlimited packages last year,
so it doesn't throttle you ever.

------
TrainedMonkey
"In contrast, XG-FAST uses an increased frequency range up to 500 MHz to
achieve higher speeds but over shorter distances. Bell Labs achieved 1 Gbps
symmetrical over 70 meters on a single copper pair. 10 Gbps was achieved over
a distance of 30 meters by using two pairs of lines (a technique known as
“bonding”). Both tests used standard copper cable provided by a European
operator."

30 meters with bonded pair for 10 Gbps. While this is pretty cool, due to
distance limitation we are not getting telephone line modems that can outstrip
fiber optics.

~~~
nardi
> While this is pretty cool, due to distance limitation we are not getting
> telephone line modems that can outstrip fiber optics.

From the article:

"XG-FAST can help operators accelerate FTTH deployments, taking fiber very
close to customers without the major expense and delays associated with
entering every home."

So you actually _are_ getting a modem, hooked up to your telephone line, that
goes up to 70m over telephone cable to the street, and then fiber the rest of
the way. Makes a lot more sense than literally doing fiber to every home.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> So you actually are getting a modem, hooked up to your telephone line, that
> goes up to 70m over telephone cable to the street, and then fiber the rest
> of the way. Makes a lot more sense than literally doing fiber to every home.

This is exactly how AT&T Uverse works in brownfield retrofits.

~~~
quink
Much more than 70 metres typically.

------
barbs
Anyone know if this would be feasible in Australia? Our National Broadband
Network was originally planned to be fiber-to-the-home, but changed to a
fiber-to-the-node system with the change of government. Not sure how close the
average home is to its nearest node, so I don't know if it'd be less than 30
metres in most cases...

~~~
monochr
No.

This is for fiber to the premise, not fiber to the node. It would have solved
some of the problems with the old NBN model, especially in highrise buildings
in the city.

I'm simply for this by the fact the government has been progressively removing
all technical references about the NBN from every government website. During
their election they promised a climate controlled box every 500 meters or so.
This was ridiculed as completely out of the question due to cost and
maintenance and has been quietly dropped since then. So even at the best case
scenario the distance will be x20 as long as in these trials. And as the
researchers noted: "giving broadband speeds up to 500 Mbps over a distance of
100 meters. In contrast, XG-FAST uses an increased frequency range up to 500
MHz to achieve higher speeds but over shorter distances."

~~~
robotresearcher
> No. This is for fiber to the premise, ...

It's about squeezing more out of the existing copper to the premise, while we
wait for fibre to arrive.

~~~
monochr
No. It's about nit needing to rip out whole buildings to put in fiber to the
plug. They say it in the article.

~~~
robotresearcher
You don't rip out the building because you're using the existing copper that
runs inside the building. Maybe you'd run fibre from the junction box to the
building then, or maybe you'd just use the existing copper on that route too.

~~~
monochr
Please read the article. This technology is only viable for copper wires
shorter than 30m. The previous spec at 1/10 speed was for wire shorter than
100m.

~~~
robotresearcher
Quoth the article:

"a major business benefit in locations where it is not physically,
economically or aesthetically viable to lay new fiber cables all the way into
residences. Instead, fiber can be brought to the curbside, wall or basement of
a building and the existing copper network used for the final few meters."

I interpreted "the premise" as the building, but perhaps the conventional
interpretation is the entire grounds. Either way, this is certainly about
squeezing more out of the existing copper.

~~~
monochr
Existing copper inside the building.

It is absolutely useless for the 1km+ distance to exchanges common in cities
and 10km+ common in rural settings.

------
ajb
Although this is spun to sound like a breakthough, it's basically a cost
reduction measure. G.fast and this new XG.fast are there to avoid the hassle
of negotiating with each householder as to how new fibre gets deployed on
their property, when it's a lot easier to negotiate with the municipality all
in one go.

~~~
gardarh
Cost reduction being a key factor!

The greatest breakthroughs provide something for the masses at a lower cost
than previously possible. An important part of engineering is leveraging
existing infrastructure to improve service quality. As an example of this it
has been technically possible to put fibre into every home for years but
apparently not feasible, price-wise. Speed is speed whether it's copper or
fibre.

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hexleo
"speed of 10 Gbps for transmission of data over traditional copper telephone
lines" Good news for some places where they still use copper telephone lines
connect to the Internet. But in my view, Chinese operators don't like this
technology, they more like optical fiber. The first, it's faster than copper
telephone and the future copper telephone lines will completely replaced. The
second, in countrysides some bad guys steal the copper to sell for money, it's
a big problem for operators.

~~~
MAGZine
Take for example remote/rural communities however. It is enormous investment
to run fiber out to these communities. Eventually, the copper will need to be
upgraded... In the mean time, this is an excellent stopgap measure.

~~~
hexleo
In some ways, you are right. In China, some facts prove countryside's copper
is often stolen.Chinese operators has a same measure, they call it "Fiber In,
Copper Out"(translate for English it's so hard for me), first is improve
network speed, second is reduce copper costs due to stolen. They prefer build
fiber in countryside, rather than upgraded copper.

~~~
walshemj
I worked for a consulting enginer in the 80's and our telecom guy said the
same about African states use microwave for long links as the copper gets
nicked.

------
ksec
What is much more interesting here is G.Fast, the technology it is based on.

G.Fast, is suppose to be a FTTdp, where fibre goes all the way to your
building and replacing the central copper wiring box with its DSLAM. In
countries where you have many flats within a building, it is likely the copper
wiring to home socket are all within 100M range.

I am not sure this applies to every scenario in every countries. But the
concern of Copper quality is mainly a problem with copper outside of the
building. Copper within the building are in much better shape and form.

G.Fast also allow operator to config the upload and download speed. Hopefully
that means at least 100Mbps of upload speed in the age of cloud computing.

I cant wait to see this deploy. No longer would teleco needs permission and
planning to work around every home and every building to get high speed
internet.

Huawei and Alcatel-Lucent are the fore front in G.Fast technology.

------
zw123456
This is interesting, but as has been pointed out, the distances are very
limited. Just something to think about, 802.11ac comes pretty close to the
same speed with no wires at all, so, it kind of makes you think, why even
bother with the wires at all.

~~~
redwall_hp
Spectrum crunch and interference.

~~~
quink
Probably more likely to be more fundamental - attenuation, I think. But those
two certainly don't help either.

------
hacker234
The problem will be getting regulatory approval. A high speed digital signal
at VHF is going to radiate like blazes and wipe out FM Broadcast and hundreds
of emergency services.

This system will face the same problems as BPL, only much, much worse.

The truth is that you can't reuse the (all ready full) radio spectrum,
especially over copper.

The only way you can do it is with well shielded Coaxial Cable (eg Cable TV)
or via light (eg Optical Fiber).

It's a triumph of Sales people over Engineering. Or to put it another way, the
laws of physics will always win.

------
zaroth
If Comcast said, "I can get you a 10Gbit connection, it's fiber all the way,
but it's going to end as an SFP port at the pole/wiring closet, and you have
to take it from there."

I would have thought homeowners and businessowners alike would spend the money
to upgrade their own "infra" to make that work, rather than something like
this. Obviously AL thinks there's a market here, it just seems like such a
waste.

~~~
alex4nder
Wiring isn't under control of the home/business owner until it hits their NID,
which is already on-prem. Getting the connection to the NID is where the
expense is, and it's why AL is putting money into the process. Without this,
someone has to spend the thousands of dollars pulling permits/digging trenches
to run fiber to your house.

~~~
zaroth
I guess I don't understand why you need this much tech just to get the fiber
off the pole and into my house [1].

The coax drop from Comcast drapes off the pole, hits little more than a barrel
connector on the side of the house, and then comes straight in the house and
plugs into the modem.

Why can't you do the same with fiber?

[1] - [http://www.aflglobal.com/Products/Fiber-Outside-
Plant/OptiNI...](http://www.aflglobal.com/Products/Fiber-Outside-
Plant/OptiNID-Fiber-Demarcation/OptiNID-ONT-760XL-Optical-Demarcation-
Closure.aspx)

------
taylorbuley
The embedded short on Claude Shannon is very good and highly reccommended
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1-Iq9Vm28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq1-Iq9Vm28)

A good book on the subject is Gleick's The Information
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-
Flood/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Information-History-Theory-
Flood/dp/1400096235)

------
pud
This'll make some people switch from cable, back to dialup modems (sort of).
Which is funny/cool.

------
noso
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25840502](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25840502)

Alcatel-Lucent and BT said speeds of 1.4 terabits per second were achieved
during their joint test - enough to send 44 uncompressed HD films a second.

Awesome!

------
callesgg
"It will enable operators to provide Internet connection speeds that are
indistinguishable from fiber-to-the-home services"

Doubt it. But it is a nice achievement.

------
WatchDog
30 meters seems pretty useless, even for a FTTN setup, it would surely be
simpler just to run fibre all the way then build nodes every 60 meters or so.

~~~
zephjc
Like others said in this thread, copper up to 70m to a switch box, then fiber
from there on out.

------
danbmil99
So why am I still stuck with Comcrap? sonic.net is a great co. with excellent
service, and they can only get me 1.4 mbit/sec speed using copper.

~~~
quink
If you're on 1.4 Mbps then the odds are very good you're too far from your
exchange for this to make even the slightest bit of a difference.

Not just by a small factor, but at that speed you're likely to be around two
orders of magnitude too far away for this be in any way useful due to the
attenuation inherent in your copper line.

The only way this latest increment is useful is to bring fibre in your case
about 99% of the way to your household. This will bridge the last 1% because
it's cheaper than running fibre into your household.

------
CodeWriter23
Wonder what the latency is like.

~~~
eloisant
We already have similar latency with FTTH and ADSL, this one being "in-
between" I don't see how the latency would be any different.

------
madengr
7/10/2114 Alcatel-Lucent-Comcast-Timewarner megacorp sets record of 10 Tbps
over 200 year old copper telephone lines. CEO states "We'd really like to
bring you broadband but we've been fighting this last mile issue for quit some
time. This new breakthrough will finally solve that."

~~~
lupin_sansei
Nitpicking but telephone lines are 1880s and afterwards, and copper doesn't
really degrade with age until normal conditions like iron.

~~~
madengr
It's a joke.

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guelo
Click-bait headline. Add "30 meters" to the headline and it would drop.

~~~
Gustomaximus
As some others have mentioned, this isn't about getting internet from the
exchange to the home/business, just from the street. In this context 30 metres
should be ok for the vast majority. From the article

> It will enable operators to provide Internet connection speeds that are
> indistinguishable from fiber-to-the-home services, a major business benefit
> in locations where it is not physically, economically or aesthetically
> viable to lay new fiber cables all the way into residences. Instead, fiber
> can be brought to the curbside, wall or basement of a building and the
> existing copper network used for the final few meters.

------
transfire
How in the world can this be cheaper than running the fiber 100 more feet?

~~~
tcas
Because every household has copper phone cables run to it already. You can run
fiber to the trunk and have high speed communication using existing copper
lines.

> XG-FAST can help operators accelerate FTTH deployments, taking fiber very
> close to customers without the major expense and delays associated with
> entering every home

~~~
cdr
How many of those existing copper cables are of high enough quality that they
can support anywhere near that speed though? The copper lines in my parents'
house are so bad they can't even support a second phone line, much less decent
networking speeds.

------
madengr
Nice technology, but I have had it with telecom company excuses. Electricity
has been deployed to most homes in rural areas, as well as copper telephone.
It should be no different with fiber. Why could it be done then, but not now?

~~~
schwap
I didn't look up any sources, but if I remember right, the difference was
massive government assistance.

edit: Yep - rural electrification was pretty much completely government
driven[1]

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electricity#United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_electricity#United_States)

~~~
madengr
Didn't telecom get billions of tax $ last decade for broadband deployment,
with nothing to show for it?

Anyway, looks like they were interest free loans vs. outright subsidies. At
least something came out of the New Deal, whereas fedgov spending during this
recession is pissed away.

~~~
schwap
Looks like it's been/is being talked about, but no money's gone anywhere yet
[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_universal_service#Uni...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadband_universal_service#United_States)

~~~
nitrogen
There was another program in the 1990s under Clinton that benefited the
telcos, but no development happened. I don't remember what it was called.

------
3rd3
What is the theoretical limit (for comparison)?

~~~
quink
Whatever the theoretical limit is, they're pretty much right at it at this
point. Similar to how ADSL2+ was near enough at the theoretical limit of what
the frequency spectrum it used could do given the attenuation it was asked to
do it at.

For the same frequency ranges as ADSL2+, VDSL2 delivered pretty much no
improvement. What VDSL2 did do is expand the frequency range up to 17 MHz/30
MHz, depending on the profile.

So the question you might want to ask is "How high a frequency can we use?"
and in that case the real question you're looking for is "How short a piece of
copper do you have?".

And the answer to that is very quickly becoming "a very short piece of copper
indeed".

Either that or a lot of copper that's ideally also very thick... which,
considering most copper was rolled out with the aim of providing a low
attenuation at 3000 Hz over at most a low number of kilometres isn't often the
case.

tl;dr: How long is a piece of string?

------
PaulHoule
Great, one more excuse why Big Telecom won't give us FTTH in the United
States.

~~~
snowwrestler
I just want some competition in high speed connectivity. I don't care if it's
fiber, copper, wireless, coax, power line, or sewer. If this makes it cheaper
for me to get 100 Mbps or higher, sounds good to me.

------
wahsd
So what, that changes absolutely nothing about the monopolistic system of our
infrastructure. All this will lead to is hidden collusion on the part of the
providers just like is done in the mobile phone and data sector.

We have a failed government with incompetent and neutered regulators and
legislators that are operating in a system that is so deeply corrupt that the
best of intentions cannot generate any kind of real momentum. There really
needs to be a focus on bifurcating the infrastructure from services. What is
wrong with us that we pay taxes to pay for functions of government when all
that happens is that those taxes go to subsidizing the privatization of
government services and then being overcharged by that very private sector we
stood up.

Infrastructure is a core function and purpose of government, without it being
under socialized responsibility and control there is no purpose for
government.

Another example that is so blatantly obvious but no one seems to see for all
the trees is electronic payment processing; why is there no almost zero cost
electronic payment infrastructure that essentially serves the same purpose as
paper money. I am not at all for the abolition of paper money, especially in
light of the reminder that government is not our friend or anyone's friend but
its own, but there should be a government / public infrastructure for payment
processing. It's actually rather shocking that there is no such system and it
is purely corruption of the worst kind that is preventing it.

Ever wonder why it is rather difficult to use a Visa/MC/AE in Germany, it's
because the electronic payment / money system is a pseudo public
infrastructure and highly regulated. There is no money to be creamed and
siphoned off of the economy by the big payment processors.

Something the startup community does not take into account is that it is only
as successful and has as much wiggle room as the big cartel controlled sectors
permit. So you built a service or a product, you're just mucking around while
you still have to pay protection money to the mob.

Sometimes I wish that efforts like Dwolla would gain a lot more traction.
Their payment processing fee is fractions of the extortion of the mob, yet
they can't seem to catch on. What is wrong with us, why would we be ok with
having your profits siphoned off? Those huge payment processing fees are
profits that you pay for not good reason.

The same problem affects this technology, there is absolutely no reason for
any ISP to implement this technology any time soon. They get away with
extortion for shitty services, why would they provide exponentially faster
service for anything but a lot more as they seesaw up expectation that "of
course, it's faster so I should pay more"

~~~
simias
Your rant might be warranted but it's completely off topic here. This is a
technical achievement, I don't think "so what" is the appropriate reaction.

------
orasis
How many of you guys actually hook up any of your equipment to a hard line?
I've used nothing but wifi for years. I'd be more interested in ultra-high
speed wireless that could stretch to 30m and get me to that fiber node.

~~~
kijin
It's possible, but then the Wi-Fi router will be outside of your home,
probably mounted on the poles, and owned/operated by your ISP. Who will be
happy to charge you by the number of devices you can connect.

No thanks, I would much rather have direct control over my own home network.
(Sure, you could achieve that with a repeater in your home, but then what was
the point of moving the Wi-Fi router to the street?)

My home PC is hooked up to my router with a CAT6 cable. The router is hooked
up to the FTTH modem with another CAT6 cable. So it's hard lines all the way.
Both the speed and latency of this setup are much better than anything I ever
got with any wireless alternative, especially when I'm trying to talk with
other devices on the other side of a wall or two.

~~~
TheMakeA

      Who will be happy to charge you by the number of devices you can connect.
    

ISPs (used to) do that. The solution has always been to use your own router in
front of the modem. Sounds like a similar solution would work here.

~~~
kijin
Quote from GP:

> (Sure, you could achieve that with a repeater in your home, but then what
> was the point of moving the Wi-Fi router to the street?)

------
djloche
AT&T / Verizon (and the cable companies) will never give up their golden goose
unless threatened by competition. They can do FTTC all day long - unless they
actually uncap or otherwise significantly change the subscriber bandwidth it
means nothing to the end-user.

