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Welsh Scientists Radically Increase Fiber Broadband Speeds With COTS Parts
Mark.JUK writes "Scientists working under an EU funded (3 Million Euros) project out of Bangor University in Wales (United Kingdom) have developed a commercially-exploitable way of boosting broadband speeds over end-user fibre optic lines by using Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) technology, which splits a laser down to multiple different optical frequencies (each of which can be used to carry data), and low-cost off-the-shelf components. The scientists claim that their solution has the ability to 'increase broadband transmission by up to two thousand times the current speed and capacity' (most UK Fibre-to-the-Home or similar services currently offer less than 100 Megabits per second) and it can do this alongside a 'significant reduction in electrical power consumption.'"
It's not a perfect market though because one company (British Telecom) inherited all the copper wiring joining people's homes to the network even though it was originally publicly funded through the Post Office before BT existed as a commercial company. Now they charge you a line rental even if you use a different ISP (as if they could rent that specific piece of wire to anyone else). Some areas of the UK are cabled up and you can avoid this nonsense but I was recently informed that my flat (=apartment) could not access cable despite the fact it's on a main road in West London. The cost of physically drilling through concrete and laying cables is way way beyond the budget of small ISPs so you're stuck piggybacking on BT lines.