Copper Wire As Fast As Fiber?

Krishna Dagli writes to tell us that a new consortium of hardware vendors and phone companies have banded together in order to try for fiber optic speeds over copper wiring. From the article: "To avoid interference, current DSL implementations use static spectrum management that is built for a 'worst-case' scenario. Most actual phone lines would allow for far better performance, and DSM technology will allow each DSL connection to be regulated in real time by the hardware based on measured crosstalk and on current data needs of each customer. The end result could be DSL connections that top out at 100Mbps or more."

Comments

That's nice and all...

[viking099]

But when will it hit my doorstep at a reasonable rate?

All this talk of speedy internet access is great, but I'm still not seeing much benefit when it comes to what my ISP offers.

Poor topic

[cheezus_es_lard]

Copper Wire as Fast as Fiber? What a misleading topic. How about 'Copper Outside Plant can rival current FTTH speeds,' as this is much less inflammatory and more on target with what is intended to be said. With such a general topic there's no telling what the story is actually about, and in this case, it's not any of the following:

-Copper Outside Plant transmits data at OC-192 speeds
-Lab makes Copper transmit OC-48 speeds
-Copper Wire discovered to have same frequency versatility of fiber
-Police Cables allow bacon to move at speed of light

Sheesh.

love and peace
-cheez

Sailing effect

[telepilot]

By increasing the capacity of copper to (best case) 100Mps they are only prolonging the inevitable. Fiberoptics has an upper limit that is immensely higher...

Monopolies overrule market forces

[JonTurner]

So, in other words there's a technology to make existing infrastructure MUCH more efficient. Don't hold your breath waiting for it. DSL is owned by whom? The monopoly telephone companies, and with the recent court rulings that say they don't HAVE to sublease it is not likely there will be 1:1 competition in the near future. My guess is that the phone companies will see this as an excuse to raise prices, due to perceived value*, rather than to provide improved performance that competes with cable at a similar, or lower price.

*Just as CDs cost less to manufacture than cassette tapes, but until recently sold for more $$, such as it will be with "extreme DSL" (or whatever they call this service).

Title is wrong! Article is apples vs. oranges

[MasterC]

The article title "Copper wire as fast as fiber?" is blatantly wrong. Flashy to make a better, more controversial headline.

The article title implies that a copper wire can have more bandwidth than a fiber. Read on:

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.

See the switch in argument? From "copper > fiber" in the title (and other locations within the article to boot) to "copper*50 > fiber*1". I'm sure if I bundle 10,000,000 twisted pairs then I can out-bandwidth a single fiber any day, but does that mean I should say copper is faster than fiber?

It's like titling my article "3.5 inch floppies hold more than a hard drive?" but then say if I combine 2 billion floppies in parallel then I get 3 TB of storage where as a single hard drive only holds 700 GB.

Apples and oranges.

That said, I think the article is trying to point out that the existing copper can be better utilized and achieve higher bandwidth than if a new, single fiber were trenched in its place. I see little controversy in this. But this does not mean "copper > fiber".

I have to admit that this is probably one of the most confusing and poorly written Ars article I've ever read.

My own test

[k4_pacific]

I did my own test to see if copper wire was a fast as fiber.

Day One
Ate a bowl of fiber. Bowel movement within two hours. Pretty fast.

Day Two
Ate a bowl of copper wire. Severe internal bleeding.

Ultimately, results were inconclusive as the emergency surgery on day two negated any possible effects of the copper wire.

Probably aren't buying connectivity.

[Kadin2048]

Even if the fiber that's being taken out to your curb can take 100Mb/s, if they don't think there's a market for it, they probably aren't buying the backhaul capacity to provide that level of service.

In other words, they might be able to get you hooked up at 100Mb/s, but you'd only be able to talk to your neighbors and other people on the local subnet at that speed.

This is a real problem for almost all broadband ISPs, because they're just not buying the capacity from their Tier 1 ISP that they should be, in order to offer even the speeds that they're advertising to people. "Real" internet connections -- and by that I mean ones to upper-tier ISPs with bandwidth and QoS and uptime guarantees -- are not cheap, and thus they get skimped on.