Alcatel-Lucent's XG-FAST Pushes 10,000Mbps Over Copper Phone Lines 149
Mark.JUK (1222360) writes The Bell Labs R&D division of telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent has today claimed to set a new world record after they successfully pushed "ultra-broadband" speeds of 10,000 Megabits per second (Mbps) down a traditional copper telephone line using XG-FAST technology, which is an extension of G.fast (ITU G.9700).
G.fast is a hybrid-fiber technology, which is designed to deliver Internet speeds of up to 1000Mbps over runs of copper cable (up to around 250 meters via 106MHz+ radio spectrum). The idea is that a fiber optic cable is taken closer to homes and then G.fast works to deliver the last few meters of service, which saves money because the operator doesn't have to dig up your garden to lay new cables. XG-FAST works in a similar way but via an even shorter run of copper and using frequencies of up to 500MHz. For example, XG-FAST delivered its top speed of 10,000Mbps by bonding two copper lines together over just 30 meters of cable.
G.fast is a hybrid-fiber technology, which is designed to deliver Internet speeds of up to 1000Mbps over runs of copper cable (up to around 250 meters via 106MHz+ radio spectrum). The idea is that a fiber optic cable is taken closer to homes and then G.fast works to deliver the last few meters of service, which saves money because the operator doesn't have to dig up your garden to lay new cables. XG-FAST works in a similar way but via an even shorter run of copper and using frequencies of up to 500MHz. For example, XG-FAST delivered its top speed of 10,000Mbps by bonding two copper lines together over just 30 meters of cable.
Up to 250m? (Score:5, Insightful)
So in real life, around 20m, give or take 12m.
Meanwhile, in DSL-land (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest of us still do local caching proxies and QoS hackery to make the most of our 2-3 Mbps.
Why not use Gbps? (Score:5, Insightful)
Other than just wanting to sound super awesome is there any reason why they aren't using Gbps instead of Mbps? It's sort of like saying a new car has a top speed of a bazillion picometers per second.
Re:Up to 250m? (Score:4, Insightful)