Higher, always higher speed

Higher, always higher speed

It is one of the basic trend currently in transmission. Most of the operator' s marketing ads for their broadband services is based on speed. After ADSL that started with 512kbit/s few years ago, then currently transmitting at about 2Mbit/s, speed has been increased to multi megabit/s. ADSL2+ is the new “panacée”. Free, a French ISP, just announced a 24 Mbit/s ATM stream.

But advertising on speed is misleading. In transmission, everybody knows that speed is limited by the length of the copper loop. So, only a fraction of the customers will be able to receive multi megabit streams, according to the length of their local loop. For example, ADSL2+ can deliver its maximum of 24Mb only within 300 meters of the telephone exchange, and at 3 km, maximum speed is falling at about 8 Mbit/s.

The conclusion is that ADSL2+ high-speed services will be unavailable to a large percentage of the population, except if fiber is laid down in the ground to replace copper wires.