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Welsh Scientists Radically Increase Fiber Broadband Speeds With COTS Parts

Posted by timothy on from the believe-it-when-it-appears-in-your-home dept.

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.'"

5 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. But we won't get it because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... BT are bloody useless!

    1. Re:But we won't get it because... by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not incompetence in this instance; It is actually malice. BT would much rather hold on to this tech for the next 15 years, squeezing an extra few pounds per month out of you for the next tier of service, right up until you're paying more for your internet connection than you are for your mortgage.

      Consider; The identical fibre with this new tech is all of a sudden 2000x times less efficient than it could be. Do you think you'll be charged 1/2000 of the current rate if it's implemented and you elect not to use it?

      (I realise there is more to this, like switching overhead, backbone speed, contention etc).

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
  2. Where is end-user fiber optics the capacity limit? by shoppa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know if things are better in the UK, but here in the US the bottleneck for fiber-to-end-user is rarely the link from CO to end-user. The bottleneck is aggregate traffic capacity from CO to the backbones, an amount that has to be shared among all users. Giving individual end users more capacity to the CO sounds like it would make the current bottleneck even more apparent.

  3. Great, but will it be useful? by Bearhouse · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not sure ISPs and others would be keen in upgrading their infrastructure to make the theoretical speed really available to home users, sadly...

  4. Doesn't increase speed - increases capacity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The speed of light is the speed of light.
    Would love to know how they made it faster :)

    Yes the effect is improved throughput - ie transfer rates or download/upload speeds, but the packet speed isn't improved at all.

    When we can introduce a photon into one end of a piece of fiber and have it instantaneously come out the other end, we'll have *speed* improvements.
    Until then, we're only increasing capacity.

    That is all. EOL