Alcatel-Lucent Achieves 300 Mbps over Copper

Although fiber-to-the-home is the ideal, long-term solution for telco providers, it will require an overhaul to existing outside plant and a major time and fiscal investment. In the meantime, operators are looking for new technologies to increase the speed and extend the life of their current copper plant.

Alcatel-Lucent, the worldwide leader in DSL port shipments, is likewise invested in the technology. The company announced today that it has developed a method to transmit data at 300 Mbps over two copper lines.

Researchers at the company’s Bell Labs demonstrated technology that boosts the theoretical transmission speeds of DSL to 300 Mbps over a distance of 400 meters (or about 1,300 feet), or 100 Mbps at 1 kilometer (3,281 feet).

The company is using bonding technology to  join two DSL lines (copper pairs), and a proprietary feature called “Phantom Mode” that creates a third, virtual copper pair to send data over a combination of the two physical ones. Researches also employed an existing technique called vectoring that eliminates interference or “crosstalk” between copper wires.

Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, which is also working on vectoring products, expect field trials to commence this calendar year, and the technology to become commercially available in 2011.

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