Ericsson touts 500Mbits/sec broadband over copper

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 17 Mar 2009 at 11:21

Ericsson clams to have achieved a 500Mbits/sec broadband connection over copper wiring.

Such speeds were previously considered the domain of fibre, but although Ericsson has proven the speeds are possible on copper there are some notable caveats attached.

DSL connections transmit data over a twisted pair of copper cables. Unfortunately, the longer these cables are the more they interfere with each other, degrading the speed of the connection - a problem known as Crosstalk.

In order to get around this Ericsson has developed an advanced type of Crosstalk cancellation technology, dubbed vectorised VDSL2, to reduce the noise originating from the other lines.

With this technology in place, Ericsson then bonded six telephone lines together, each of which is capable of delivering data at 83.33Mbits/sec, creating an aggregated connection of 500Mbits/sec.

As a proof-of-concept the technology is certainly impressive, however hopes of it reaching beyond the lab may be dented by the fact that to maintain the quality of signal Ericsson had to reduce line length to 500m.

Ericsson is making a name for itself by pushing the limits of broadband. Back in December the company announced that mobile broadband speeds could hit a blistering 42Mbits/sec as early as this year.