Fast Internet Now Possible Through Old Phones Lines With New Technology
For most people with Internet access (in the UK at least) options are pretty much limited to either slow telephone line internet, such as ADSL, or to fast fibre optic internet such as 100Mb broadband. Of course there is also the option of using mobile internet supplied by huge WiFi masts or by network carriers like Telefonica, Verizon or AT&T. However, for those looking for a home internet connection if you do not have a fibre optic connection then up until now your options for getting fast internet have been hugely limited.
Alcatel-Lucent have devised a solution which allows old telephone lines to be used to provide fast internet connection of up to 1.1 Gigabits per second, with a low of 500 mbps. Considering even most people on fibre optic do not get such speeds this new technology is clearly capable of delivering the same speeds. The new standard from Alcatel-Lucent is called G.fast and it uses existing telephone lines, broadens the frequency and reduces interference to deliver these high speeds.
According to Technology Review the new G.fast standard decays over distance but works best over the average distance from a telephone pole to a house. The new technology means that fibre optic only needs to be installed on mainlines and the individual connections to houses can be done by existing telephone line infrastructure. This is expected to speed up the process of rolling out high speed internet to homes. The technology is expected to be approved by the International Telecommunications Union by 2015.
Image courtesy of The Next Web
This is great news, I must have the worst connection in britain right now 80kb down 20kb up!
Pfft that’s an amazing speed, you can even download pictures in under a minute!!!
this is great, though I’d love to see how well it performs in real world situations. that level of throughput needs a very good SNR.
Upgrade my 100mb to 1GB would be awesome ! 🙂
1 mb/s peak download seems bad-ish enough as it is, this just makes it even worse… Awesome news though!
Either phone lines or fiber? Umm.. What about cable internet? I get my 30 meg internet over the same line as my cable TV. Do they not have cable in the UK?
No cable TV doesn’t exist in UK.
Really? Is TV all OTA then? just curious
We use digital TV. We can have satellites installed to receive it (Google: Sky TV) or pay a one time fee for a ‘free view’ box which we plug into existing antennas on our houses.
Interesting, I never considered cable co monopolies might not exist on the other side of the pond! On one hand, you are stuck with DSL but on the other you don’t have to deal with Comcast :).
Wow.. Seriously? So you either get digital over the air or use a dish.. Remind me to never plan to move to the UK.. Cable TV is so much better than either of those options, especially the channel guide and on-demand programming. Its so much faster than the dish..
yeh well I just use whats called freeview and its over the air, but you still get a full 7 day channel guide on it and for the on-demand programming people have to use smart TV’s/game consoles/ smart blu ray players and they get access to iplayer and like 4od and stuff like that.
I am quite curious as to what the advantages to cable is actually, do you get loads more channels or something?
If it lets you view this over there, this is the channel lineup for the top end digital cable package from my provider in my area. If you get the digital box and the top end subscription you get all of these channels. http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/tvlistings/ZCGrid.do?method=decideFwdForLineup&zipcode=27804&setMyPreference=false&lineupId=NC32455:X On the TV in the family room where we actually have the box we get maybe 1/4th of that, minus the HD channels. Since we don’t have an HDTV in there we don’t get any of the HD channels, but that is not something you pay extra for. If there is an HD version of a channel, you get it if you have the regular version on your level of subscription. Basically it is similar channel count to satellite, but the channel guide and on-demand programming is much more responsive, and you don’t have to worry about bad weather affecting your signal. Now, WITHOUT the cable box, with just the tuner in the TV, these are the channels you get, at least on non-digital TVs. http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/tvlistings/ZCGrid.do?method=decideFwdForLineup&zipcode=27804&setMyPreference=false&lineupId=NC32455:- Now, on a digital receiver, like the HDTV on my desk here that doubles as a second monitor, there are digital versions of all the analog stations plus another 15-20 stations that the receiver in an older tube TV cannot pick up, plus HD versions of 5-6 of the major networks. All of this is over the same line into the house.
Actually we do have cable in the UK, but not everywhere. In very approximate terms, about half of homes in the UK can receive cable. Unfortunately the main cable provider can’t afford to expand its network any further. They nearly went bust about 10 years ago during a period of expansion.
Wow 2015? What else do the fucking International Telecommunications Union do between now and 2015?
skim profits and bonuses from taxpayers money 😛
sounds good as they have fios here by not ran to anything yet so maybe if they can just run it to the old phone lines we can get it sooner then never after all lol
Yeah & you still have the massive issues with the old copper telephone wires which are basically crumbling to dust. Full Fiber to the home is capable of the same speed & doesn’t have those issues so while it is slower to role out you don’t need to replace it. Get the tiniest bit of water in your telephone wire & it’s stuffed.