Copper at Fiber Speeds
Imagine copper lines running at fiber optic speeds… yes, this could have huge implications.
An Israeli consortium of telcos and companies like ECI Telecom, funded in part by the Israeli government, is attempting just that. Ars Technica has the big scoop:
If they succeed, Verizon’s $18 billion decision to run fiber all the way into consumers’ homes might be a costly one for them and other companies around the world that have jumped on the fiber optic bandwagon.…One of Dr. Cioffi’s presentations of DSM contains a slide that argues that copper actually has more available bandwidth than fiber; it just needs to be better used. He points out that a bundle of 50 Cat 3 twisted-pair wires (the kind that might be used in the last segment of the phone network) has 10Gbps of available bandwidth to distribute to the fifty homes at the end of those wires. By contrast, fiber to the home has only 2.5Gbps to distribute to its homes.
The group’s main hope is a technology called Dynamic Spectrum Management (DSM). Telephone line cables are run in large bundles, and each wire in the bundle has electricity running through it. That makes a magnetic field, and when the magnetic fields of adjacent wires interact, you get a type of interference in the wires called “crosstalk”. Higher speed transfers create more crosstalk. DSM would greatly reduce crosstalk, allowing for much higher transfer rates.
Now, even if this group suceeds in meeting or exceeding fiber optic speeds, this could still be integrated very sucessfully into networks like Verizon’s, where the last mile, or the cable from VZ’s equipment to your wall jack, is still copper. Current 7Mbps top speeds could be boosted to 10Gbps (10,000Mbps).
Get the full low-down at Ars Technica
