Huawei Claims ‘World’s First’ 700Mbps DSL

For broadband users waiting for a superfast connection may not have to hold out till fibre arrives. Chinese network vendor Huawei has demonstrated a home broadband DSL conneciton over copper phone lines, running at a staggering speed of 700Mbit/s.

The 700 Mbps DSL prototype is the first of its kind in the world, according to Huawaei. Currently, the top speed for DSL-based broadband over phone lines is 100Mbps. Most users know the reality is usually far less than that – and this week a stunt showed a pigeon carrying data faster than Britain’s rural broadband.

Future Proofing

The prototype will “enable operators worldwide to build high-bandwidth, cost-effective, and future-proof broadband access networks with SuperMIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) technology,” said the company. “This prototype far exceeds the industry’s current DSL broadband wireline communications technology, which reaches a data rate of 100 Mbps, and is better suited to meet the needs of operators supporting ultra broadband services.”

“DSL technologies for broadband access are showing great market potential,” said You Yiyong, president of Huawei’s Access Network Product Line. “As a leader in the development of DSL technologies, our newest DSL prototype demonstrates our commitment to providing customer-centric and groundbreaking solutions and services for operators to enhance their competitiveness and profitability.”

How Does It Work?

The Huawei release is not very forthcoming about how the technology works, and Huawei was unable to field a spokesman for eWEEK Europe UK at the time of writing. The use of the term MIMO has added to the confusion, as it normally refers to a wireless technology that uses multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver to improve communication performance.

Wireless MIMO uses spatially separated antennas and signal processing, so it can use radio reflections to create multiple paths for th eradio signals between transmitter and receiver. The technique is used in the 802.11n wireless LAN standard, and is proposed for future developments in cellular networks.

Given that, it is hard to envisage this technique applied to DSL, where the signals all have to go through the same wire.

What the company does say is that the “SuperMIMO technology uses four twisted pairs to achieve a downstream rate of 700 Mbps at a distance of 400 meters.”

Huawei claims that it addresses crosstalk (i.e. interferance) among multiple twisted pairs and “dramatically increases DSL bandwidth by 75 percent, from an average of 100 Mbps per twisted pair to approximately 175 Mbps.”

“Leveraging SuperMIMO, Huawei’s 700 Mbps DSL prototype accommodates high-speed FTTB/FTTC access and bandwidth-hungry private line applications, such as base station access,” said the company.

Would It Work In the UK?

With BT and other service providers commited to rolling out fibre to parts of the UK, in an effort to push out superfast broadband, the idea that speeds of this magnitude can be achieved using a copper-based  twisted pair cable is surprising.

Whether this will mean it would be suitable for the UK’s telecoms network remains to be seen.