Australian Researcher Boosts ADSL Speeds

sea_stuart writes "Like your ADSL connection to go 100 times faster? Despite the grim state of Australian mathematics and science, there is still exciting original work being done Down Under. John Papandriopoulos, a Research Fellow with the ARC Special Research Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN) has developed a method to reduce crosstalk interference in ADSL technologies to bring speeds up the theoretical maxima possible. With an Australian Federal election due in a few weeks, and both parties promising improved broadband speeds and access, this is a welcome development, hopefully enabling higher speeds without huge expenses."

Comments

You must not be using it

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I got this story last month.

aaarrggghhhh!!

[yoshi3]

Damn dial up, I almost had forst post! :(

Re:aaarrggghhhh!!

[LiquidCoooled]

You youngsters with your electronical modems.
In my day we had to get first post with a mail-in comment.

dupe

[mgblst]

With more bandwidth, we will need more content, so I guess we can expect a few more repeats.

Politics

[religious freak]

With an Australian Federal election due in a few weeks, and both parties promising improved broadband speeds and access...

Wow, I wish this was even close to being an issue in one of our campaigns here in the USA. Can you imagine having an issue like this on the national agenda here?

Re:Politics

[MichaelSmith]

Wow, I wish this was even close to being an issue in one of our campaigns here in the USA. Can you imagine having an issue like this on the national agenda here?

Its partly because a Universal Service Obligation is built into our telecommunications laws. Companies which supply loss making services to remote areas get a subsidy from companies which do not. It may not be a driver in the current debate but it is certainly a symptom.

Another factor is that remote areas are currently being hit bad by a drought. Hand wringing over communication is one way for the Government to be seen to be helping people where they can't really do anything about water.

And to top it off, we actually have a very bad problem with rural infrastructure. We have 1/10th the population of the US, and slightly less land area to service. The cost of improving service in remote areas is a political hot potato. The party currently in power is a coalition of the National party which traditionally supports country voters and the more broad based Liberal party. By making broadband an issue the Government is trying to tell the country voters that the opposition Labour party doesn't have an interest in supporting them.

Re:Politics

[MillionthMonkey]

Its partly because a Universal Service Obligation is built into our telecommunications laws. Companies which supply loss making services to remote areas get a subsidy from companies which do not.

A law like that in the United States wouldn't have made it past the Reagan administration. American law is written by telecom lobbyists and is designed to create and sustain fake scarcity of telecommunications services.

Re:Politics

[Belacgod]

Actually, we have a similar law (the Rockefeller amendment to the 1996 Telecommunications bill). That doesn't require any particular quality of connection, though.

Re:Politics

[jamesh]

Subsidized tin cans and pieces of string for all!

oh please

[smash]

Despite the grim state of Australian mathematics and science

Grim state? At least the majority of *our* population are literate for a start.

Re:oh please

[Felius]

..the grim state of Australian mathematics and science..

that'd have to be SA, right? ;)

(hey, I had to pick one..)

Re:oh please

[BlueParrot]

Grim state? At least the majority of *our* population are literate for a start.

Maybe it's because I'm Swedish and not an expert on English grammar, but doesn't your fine language use "is" when the subject is singular? I.e, "our population is literate"?

More range please

[MichaelSmith]

If his technique can make ADSL work at greater distances from the exchange then he might be on to something. I know people who live in non-urban parts of Australia who are just on the limit of distance to the exchange for ADSL to work.

Doubling that distance could increase the number of homes covered by a factor of four.

UpZide Labs

[digithed]

There's a company in Sweden called UpZide Labs (http://www.upzide.com/) that's been working on a technology called VDSL (Vectored DSL) for a few years. This also promises speeds of 100Mb/s using normal copper connections in use right now with normal ADSL.

Don't forget Rural Areas

[Anonymous Coward]

Faster ADSL in Australia? I can't even get Mobile (Cell) phone coverage. Hell, where I work we don't even have landlines just a fucking public telephone booth. Gotta love Rural Australia :/

Re:Don't forget Rural Areas

[fons]

So how did you post this comment? Hacked modem on the phonebooth? :-)

Re:Don't forget Rural Areas

[GaryOlson]

He is probably using the Kangaroo connection protocol where messages are passed using a pocket hopping procedure.

VDSL2?

[Max Romantschuk]

First of all, this is a dupe...

But more to the point, doesn't VDSL2 already provide similar speeds?

Re:Australian?

[lord_rob the only on]

So what ? His grandparents may come from Greece. That does not mean mean he's Greek because his surname sounds greekish ...

Get the facts straight

[kju]

First: VDSL is already in active deployment e.g. in Germany (offered in speeds of 25/5 and 50/10 mbit here). Second: VDSL does NOT stand for "Vectored DSL" but for "Very High Speed DSL".

Re:Australian?

[Anthony]

This might explain why.

Re:Australian?

[thevoice]

In Australia we tend to call everyone Australian if they've been here for a few years and have citizenship. In America I'd probably be Irish-American or some such thing, despite the fact I'm five generations out of Ireland. Australians tend to find that pretty weird.

Re:Australian?

[donscarletti]

Have you ever been to Australia? Greeks in South Eastern Australia are as common as any other ancestry, you find them everywhere from blue collar labour to business, politics, entertainment and broadband research. Even Australia's most nationalistic rednecks don't see them as anything but normal, white Aussies anymore. Personally, I hear a Greek name and immediately think: Melbourne, because how much useful research has ever been done in Greece? Archimedes lived in Sicily, Pythagorus and Zeno lived in Italy, Thales lived in Turkey and both Ptolomy and Euclid lived in Egypt.

Melbourne v. Athens

[xixax]

The only city in the world with more Greeks than Melbourne is Athens.

Fully Sik Mate.

Xix.

Last mile isn't the limiting factor in the UK

[gilesjuk]

In the UK as ADSL gets faster the traffic allocations seem to get even meaner. The prices of ADSL connections remain static, even falling, yet the speed of the connections increase. This is obviously unsustainable and this is why people are complaining that they have an 8MB connection yet only get about 4-6MB download speeds.

There's already 50:1 contention, if the ISPs and BT don't increase the speed of their pipes and add more pipes then the extra speeds accounts for nothing.

Re:Australian?

[cutee]

"normal, white Aussies"? I know we here are heading back to white australia, but not that far, yet. I'll push my children out of here long before then (and I'll remember to post a message here when I do). For now if you are an Indian doctor (not American Indian doctors, anything American is welcome by the present australian government) think again before you come here. The government may think because you look darker therefore you must be on the dark side. Perhaps science is only dim for Australian politicians who do not know that dark skin is for vitamin D, not for terrorism.