10 Gigabit Plain Old Telephone Service
Bell Labs has sent unprecedented amounts of data down a telephone wire. The research arm of Alcatel-Lucent has achieved one-gigabit streams in both directions over 70m of wire, and 10-gigabit one-way over 30m using a bonded pair of telephone wires.
The demonstrations show how gigabit-speed broadband could use telephone wire to bridge the gap between a local optical fibre point and a home. The optical fibre point may be located at the curbside, on a wall or in an apartment's basement.
Service providers want to deliver gigabit services to compete with cable operators and developments like Google Fiber, the Web giant's one-gigabit broadband initiative in the US. Such technology will help the operators deploy gigabit broadband, saving them time and expense.