Groundwork Laid For Superfast Broadband Over Copper

itwbennett writes: Telecom equipment vendor Adtran has developed a technology that will make it easier for operators to roll out broadband speeds close to 500Mbps over copper lines. Adtran's FDV (Frequency Division Vectoring), enhances the capabilities of two technologies — VDSL2 with vectoring and G.fast — by enabling them to better coexist over a single subscriber line, the company said. VDSL2 with vectoring, which improves speeds by reducing noise and can deliver up to 150Mbps, is currently being rolled out by operators, while G.fast, which is capable of 500Mbps, is still under development, with the first deployments coming in mid-2015. FDV will make it easier for operators to roll out G.fast once it's ready and expand where it can be used, according to Adtran. Meanwhile, Ars Technica has an article about how Verizon is letting its copper network rot in order to passively encourage customers to switch to fiber.

Comments

In other news

[ArcadeMan]

Users can now go through their monthly cap in under ten minutes.

Why bother

[Anonymous Coward]

They keep coming up with faster and faster methods to deliver data and the ISPs keep artificially lowering speeds and data limits. As long as Comcast and the like run the show none of this will go to use for the end consumer.

Fibre optic is almost her

[Anonymous Coward]

Because copper is already ubiquitous. It's literally deployed to every home in America. And outside of dense large municipalities (think small to mid-size towns), comprehensive FTTH deployment is not financially feasible. A copper-based broadband solution is the only short-term means to bring universal broadband to most places, and it shouldn't be overlooked.

distance, please

[swschrad]

ALU's "10 gig copper" technology is something like 10 meters length. that's way out on the tail of the straight line of speed vs distance that's been pretty much unchanged since the days of ADSL 7 meg. if you can't get out of the shadow of the field cabinet, what good is it?

show me 150 mbps at 7000 wire feet, and I will pester my engineers to buy a trainload of it. it's got to be pretty clever to beat what appear to be the laws of physics.

Re:distance, please

[phizi0n]

But the real solution is FTTN: fiber to the street cabinet, rather than the current status quo of fiber to the Central Office. That will have the effect of moving you to well within a few thousand of feet of a fiber converter.

As Dane has said before, if you're going to the neighborhood you might as well go to the home. The cost difference is minimal and by going to the home it will be easier to upgrade the network later by swapping in better optical equipment. Sonic already has a few FTTH rollouts and collaborated with google before google fiber was ever a thing.

I thought they were evil for avoiding fiber upgrad

[raymorris]

I learned on Slashdot that Verizon is evil for not investing billions in upgrading their network to fiber. Now you tell me they've already upgraded half of their customers to fiber. Since they ARE upgrading their network to fiber, that's now evil. I'm confused.
I'm sure Verizon is evil of course, but are they evil for upgrading to fiber or for not upgrading to fiber?

Re:I thought they were evil for avoiding fiber upg

[Solandri]

I'm sure Verizon is evil of course, but are they evil for upgrading to fiber or for not upgrading to fiber?

Both. Their evil-ness doesn't stem from whether or not hey've upgraded to fiber. It stems from abusing their monopoly position to slow down upgrades (both fiber and copper) as a cost-cutting measure. If there were a competitor in the market offering DSL/FO/cable service and Verizon dragged their feet on upgrading to fiber or neglecting to maintain their copper, they would hemorrhage customers and lose a lot of money. But in most areas they have a (government-granted) monopoly. They can take their sweet time upgrading to fiber, and there's nothing their customers can do about it. They can let areas with older copper lines rot, and there's nothing their customers can do about it.

Case in point, the city I live in was one of the first which contracted for Verizon to provide FIOS. They rolled it out to half the city, then got into some sort of disagreement with the city and stopped. If there had been a competing cable/fiber service, they would've had a huge incentive to resolve the dispute as quickly as possible and get back to work. But they were the only game in town so they dragged it out. For six years, the houses two blocks down the street had FIOS and I didn't. Then after an election, the city council changed, Verizon got what they wanted, and resumed rolling out FIOS.

Meanwhile, the city I work in has Verizon DSL as the only provider of business Internet. Cable companies provide cable internet to residences, but apparently they're prohibited from providing it to business. So again, Verizon is the only game in town. They have absolutely refused to upgrade or maintain their copper lines. The fastest DSL speed we can get is 3 Mbps down / 768 kbps up. For this "privilege" we pay $100/mo. Most of the phone lines are of such poor quality they can't even get you that speed, and 1.5/512 or 1.5/256 is the best they can do ($50/mo). The service is such a poor value that most companies in the area just get the lowest-tier 1.0/128 service for $40/mo to minimize how much they have to pay for any Internet. Others have signed on to cellular companies' 4G data services and willingly pay per GB for overages - because it beats having to get reamed in the rear by Verizon.

Both are evil.

Re:Fibre optic is almost her

[sjames]

Because for many, fiber is like hot fusion. It's been right around the corner for decades now.