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Networking

DSL-Extender Brings Broadband 20km 149

Posted by CmdrTaco from the maybe-i-can-have-dsl-at-long-last dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Whirlpool outlines Telstra's new DSL deployment: "Telstra announced a trial of the technology back in January, saying it would allow DSL to be connected to people who were up to 20km from a central exchange. DSL Extenders work by splitting an existing copper phone line into eight separate ADSL lines using a tiny, ruggedised remote DSLAM.""
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DSL-Extender Brings Broadband 20km More

DSL-Extender Brings Broadband 20km

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  • Remote DSLAMs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Phroggy ( 441 ) * <slashdot3@ p h roggy.com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @10:54AM (#13347591) Homepage
    Remote DSLAMs are certainly nothing new, but usually the connection from the remote DSLAM to the CO is fiber, not copper.

    Newer housing developments sometimes have a fiber line that runs into the neighborhood, then copper lines from there to each house, so the phone company doesn't have to run a big bundle of copper all the way back to the CO; a remote DSLAM is the only way to offer DSL to these houses.

    What I want to know is, how did they get a reliable 2.3Mbps link to work over 20km of copper?

    • Re:Remote DSLAMs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by el_womble ( 779715 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:03AM (#13347677) Homepage
      This has always struck me as stupid.

      Copper: great for POTS, crap for data, ubiquitous. So they invent DSL to compensate for copper's inadequacies.

      Fiber: crap for POTS, great for data, ubiquitous right up until the end of the street. DSL doesn't work because its a copper technology, so these poor people who are feet away from all the broadband they could ever need can't access it because telcos only know how to do DSL.

      I'm not oblivious to the fact that it costs more to split fiber (light doesn't split like electricty), but thats because we don't do it very often as the priority has always been POTS. How long will it be, now that data outweighs POTS, until we get fiber to the front door?

      • Re:Remote DSLAMs (Score:5, Informative)

        by elgatozorbas ( 783538 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:22AM (#13347858)
        Copper: great for POTS, crap for data, ubiquitous. So they invent DSL to compensate for copper's inadequacies.

        They invent DSL because copper is ubiquitous. Why do you think the fiber was put there in the first place? Exactly to have a headend for either DSL or cable.

        Fiber: crap for POTS, great for data, ubiquitous right up until the end of the street. DSL doesn't work because its a copper technology, so these poor people who are feet away from all the broadband they could ever need can't access it because telcos only know how to do DSL.

        In a FTTC (fiber to the curb) system the DSL modems are right in the cabinet at the end of the fiber you mentioned.

        I'm not oblivious to the fact that it costs more to split fiber (light doesn't split like electricty), but thats because we don't do it very often as the priority has always been POTS. How long will it be, now that data outweighs POTS, until we get fiber to the front door?

        The problem is not technological in nature: neither light nor electricity is 'split'. The connections are point-to-point (between modem and DSLAM), so there is no splitting involved. The real cost is in guys digging trenches to put the fiber (and obviously the fiber and installations themselves).

        • neither light nor electricity is 'split'

          Well, it's not split traditionally, but I would expect the signal would need to be demuxed. Unless each house gets it's very own fiber...

      • Holliston, MA already has it (Verizon.net FIOS). Funny too, as it's a little podunk suburb that's pretty spread out...

      • Re:Remote DSLAMs (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tjstork ( 137384 ) <todd.bandrowsky@ ... UGARom minus cat> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:39AM (#13348011) Homepage Journal
        A friend of mine did do a fiber to the curb sales pilot in Texas for quite a well that could give insane bandwidths. In fact I think Verizon ran a DSL fiber to the curb trial in Arizona where you could get 50+ Mbs up and down.

      • Re:Remote DSLAMs (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 )
        This has always struck me as stupid.

        Just be careful when you use strong language that you can take what you dish out.

        How long will it be, now that data outweighs POTS, until we get fiber to the front door?

        A few years ago, when I had not yet "made it", I saved a few hundred dollars by wiring my house's telephone lines with phone parts from the local dollar store, using a kitchen knife and a penny. (as a screwdriver)

        This wiring works very well today - I have 2 phone lines in my house, and a DSL modem that gi
        • I'm not overly serious, but my sense of humour is dry, and when written down can, as it does in this instance, make it look like I'm trying to start a fire. I'm British, and sometimes I forget that Slashdot is American - Two nations seperated by a common language, its not that I'm trying to offend... honest.

          However, whats wrong with copper? We're being butt fed asynchronous 6Mbps, when we could have fiber connections that make SATA look slow. I'm sure we could argue over whether we're ready for the technolo
          • We're being butt fed asynchronous 6Mbps, when we could have fiber connections that make SATA look slow. I'm sure we could argue over whether we're ready for the technology on a national scale. Whether its cost effective etc. But in this context, when we're looking at trying to make POTS work over 20km, its time we really start to look at utiliziling fiber properly.

            Basic economics, as I tried to highlight earlier. To satisfy your average home user, you have to get CHEEEEP. Your average home user wants to pay
      • Umm.. copper gets me my 5MB down, 384KB up via coaxial. Matter of fact, coaxial gets me 2MB symmetrical at one of my offices. Of course it costs $450 a month but its worth it.

        Copper works. And it is already part of the standing infrastructure. But in most cases it is badly aged and poorly maintained copper that are the main limitation regarding DSL speeds over x distance.

        It will be a very long time before FTTP is widespread.

        The interesting part is that we're moving to a rehabilitated mill building.
        • Copper works.

          I guess this depends on what the definition of "works" is... (apologies to Slick Willie)

          2Mb (that's bits, not Bytes) may work fine for checking email and reading /. , but it definitely doesn't "work" for video applications, the games of the future, or real-time high-quality audio.

          Once there is fiber or some other high-speed (>50Mbps) technology to the doorstep we will start to see those next-generation applications. At that point we'll feel about 2Mbps the same way we feel about dialup

          • You have something of a point there. But physicists are always finding out new things about matter and the way it interacts with us.

            When you think about it, not so many years ago the most they could squeeze out of a single pair of copper was 128kpbs using both ISDN channels.

            I'm not so sure about your point though - I can stream pretty well on my 5MB connection. Oh, and I'm running VoIP on it too.

            The two 2Mb links we have are going to offices with 12 and 8 employees respectively. That will then feed

          • 2Mb (that's bits, not Bytes) may work fine for checking email and reading /. , but it definitely doesn't "work" for video applications, the games of the future, or real-time high-quality audio.

            I don't know which universe you come from, but in my world 192k VBR MP3s stream quite nicely over a 256Kb (that's bits, not Bytes) DSL line. I can easily upgrade my DSL line to a 1.5Mb (that's bits, not Bytes) line and stream FLAC audio files, which are 16/44 CD quality.

            As for video, you do have a point about the qu

            • 192k VBR MP3s

              I guess I should have clarified that I'm not really thinking of ordinary streaming, but future audio applications... specifically, I'm imagining "bands" playing in real time over the Internet. Ideally, you'd have many more than 2 channels of sound (think 4+ tracks, 2 channels each) at much higher fidelity than 192k MP3 (think FLAC or ALAC).

              In any case, the mass-market, passive-consumer application for Big Bandwith will be streaming HD video. Imagine a client that prevents Joe User from savi

    • Re:Remote DSLAMs (Score:5, Informative)

      by Macfox ( 50100 ) * on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:11AM (#13347748)
      Telstra are already using this MINIMUX technology. In many new housing estates they have installed RIM units (on the cheap) where there wasn't enough copper back to the exchange.

      When the residents discovered they couldn't get ADSL in the brand new mega expensive developments, Telstra backflipped and took two years to addressed the issue with the so called MINIMUX (Mini DSLAM). They're still rolling them out as we speak.

      Having said that, even if your on a RIM voice service, you can't get access to other providers, only Telstra (wholesale). So you're still at the mercy of Telstra's premium pricing.
    • Probably install a remote team of kangeroos to help relay the packets

    • Re:Remote DSLAMs (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In the USA, most existing DSLAMS are connected over copper. It was initially a way to avoid 'copper starvation' during buildouts in developed areas. Instead of feeding new trunk lines out from the CO, you drop a pedestal and split two pair among 24 or 48 POTs lines. Pair gain, in the sense that two pair carriers now become 48 pair at the DSLAM.

      This was going on long before fiber became as popular as it is now. New DSLAMs are likely to be fiber feeds, but the existing base is copper for historical reasons. I
      • Oh, and don't forget, thanks to various legislative and FCC actions, the LEC doesn't have to let any other ISP have access to the DSLAM. No Speakeasy for you! :/
    • What I want to know is, how did they get a reliable 2.3Mbps link to work over 20km of copper?

      Maybe they used more than one copper pair and implemented special MIMO (multi-input, multi-output) techniques. Uncoordinated copper pairs interfere with each other, degrading the transmission. These MIMO-techniques use special precoding and postcoding taking the interference into account leading to higher data rates, but only point-to-point (because you need access to the signals on all copper pairs simultaneously

  • As rugged as they claim? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Thursday August 18, 2005 @10:55AM (#13347604)
    When they talk about the extender DSLAM hardware being rugged they aren't kidding:

    Only the size of a small shoe-box, and being fully submersible to a depth of 5m (16 feet), the R8as can be deployed in more locations than any other DSLAM. It can be installed on a pole, or in a pit or manhole susceptible to flooding, as well as other locations such as un-powered cross-connect cabinets. Its small size and light weight also allows it to be suspended from overhead cable.

    I'd like to know if they were serving DSL through a submersed DSLAM during the testing phase. I'd really like to know if works as well as they claim.

  • Australian Broadband... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Macfox ( 50100 ) * on Thursday August 18, 2005 @10:56AM (#13347619)
    A few facts

    Oz Broadband is anything over 128kbs.(ISDN) Laughable yes.

    The maximum speed Tel$tra offer (over ADSL) is 1500/256kbs. *

    Up till this announcement, if you were over ~3.5km from the exchange, then you probably couldn't get ADSL.

    Telstra (Bigpond) charge for data usage in both directions and their largest offering is 10GB, with modem speed shaping there after.

    Telstra also force voice bundling. If you want ADSL, you must have voice and pay a minimum of $18.50AUD per month, even if you don't need it.*

    This new offering is best described as a mini DSLAM with a ~2.3Mbit backhaul. So even two users could potentially max it out.

    While it's good news for some that are out of reach. The overall state of Oz broadband isn't worth writing home about.

    * Some providers offer connection without a voice service (ULL) and ADSL2+ (24Mbs) but only in 5% of exchanges.
    • Oz Broadband is anything over 128kbs.(ISDN) Laughable yes.

      Slow, yes, but if your only other option is a modem then that's pretty darn good. My parents live about three miles from town and the phone lines are so poor that their 56k modem only seems to realistically do about 14.4k.

    • Re:Australian Broadband... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by EasyComputer ( 797633 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:12AM (#13347768)

      Yea, but thats the point, its for people who are already out of reach, not for those of us who have fast connections already.

      It seems that most people determine the value of new technology only according to how it benefits them, something can be beneficial to a few thousand people, but if it doesnt help us we think its nothing big. Actually this goes for everything, "Oh, they cured cancer? But I don't have cancer, therefore its a waste of time and money and is completely useless", Yea thats a bit overboard but it captures the mentality, I think.

      Ok I'm done, I'll post again in another few months.

    • Oz Broadband is anything over 128kbs.(ISDN) Laughable yes.

      The important thing about broadband is the always-on status. Now 128kbps is a bit naff, but I reckon lots of people would be happy with always on 256kbps.

      Of course I'm typing this in the UK on a 2Mbit connection that will be upgraded to 10Mbit within the next year apparently. Sadly the 10Mbit upgrade will coincide with bandwidth limits (75GB/30GB/5GB or thereabouts, for the different price ranges offered).

      The fact that my cable connection was down fo

      • If you took the free speed upgrade from NTL then you are also currently under download limits, though at the moment they're just "guidelines".

        Just wait for NTL to stick the knife in like they did to me ("we want you to pay £10 per GB over your limit"). Off to court and moving to Bulldog

        • I thought that Bulldog had a lot of issues as well?

          I didn't take up NTL's offer, they just upgraded me eventually. I'm still being billed at the 600k rate though, and I'm not going to tell them.
        • Bulldog seem to do a good deal, and will provide voice too if you want.

          I'm with demon internet who also don't (and won't) put stupid and arbitrary restrictions on use of the connection. I pay a few pounds more than some services but I get a fixed IP and can do what I like as long as it is legal.

          Sometime in the next 30 days I should get upgraded at no cost to the 2MB service.

          Samn
    • Broadband is a technology not a speed: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=broadband [reference.com]. If you get a transmission of 1 bit per second and if it over 'wide band of electromagnetic frequencies' it will be broadband. Correspondingly my network card is not baseband even though it can transmit at up to 10 million bits per second http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=baseband [reference.com]

      /rant off

    • I thought we were bad in the UK. With LLU you can get up to 8Mb/s, otherwise you're on 2Mb/s, with that hopefully increasing to 8 next year.

      However, all distance limits have been removed so as long as you pass a line test you're fine. My router reports a loop distance of 13km, and we sustain 2Mbit with no problems whatsoever.

  • HENRICO COUNTY BROADBAND (Score:4, Funny)

    by 0110011001110101 ( 881374 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:00AM (#13347660) Journal
    I hear henrico county is giving away 4 year old "gently used" broadband for only $50 lifetime membership!!

    Come quick, theres only 1,000 memberships left, and, oh yeah, bring a folding chair,waterproof pants, extra stroller, and riot gear if possible, it's gonna be one hellava fight, but a good beat down is always worth free crap right?

  • In Tokyo.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by djfray ( 803421 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:01AM (#13347663) Homepage
    Thanks to Telstra's latest creation, citizens within a twenty mile radius were alerted to Godzilla's rampaging battle with the creature of the same name.

  • Interesting, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by suitepotato ( 863945 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:01AM (#13347665)
    ...it isn't much beyond an incremental sort of gee-whiz improvement. You can send T1s over long distances and then break them out fractionally or hook them to a DSLAM and use as a backhaul for the customers. The submersion thing might have come about from submersible communications at sea or from the fact that many remote mechanisms in telecom tend to be underground and the waterproofing for those vaults tends not to be the greatest.

    I give it a big shrug and a I'll check into it later. I work in telecom so it does get my notice. Now if they make a 1.5Mbps line work to twenty miles on pure copper all the way, that will knock my socks off.
    • It's mind-blowing how lax the telcos have been in rolling out DSL. Wherever their existing network doesn't happen to reach, they just say "sorry, you need to be within X meters of an exchange" and leave it at that. In 2005 they are finally considering some sort of buildout to extend their broadband reach? Ridiculous. They should have been to this point in 1998.
    • Huh?
      I just read that and it sounds like:
      It gives 1.5Mbit/s to eight users
      at upto 20km distance
      and it uses the existing phone line

      So seeing as it up from like 3 miles and these microDSLAMs are rugged enough to be like pole monted or underground, it seems like this could do a big chunk of the goal of BPL. (see other slashdot discussion)
      If Im wrong feel free to explain it to me... It sounds better than bad, (and better than BPL) to me...

    • Re:Interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rugger ( 61955 )
      Its not a huge technical acheivement, but an important one in spreading broadband across sparely populated suburbs and towns.

      The important thing with this is that carriers can install them basicly anywhere, on a pit, on a pole, anywhere conventional DSLAMs simply cannot be put. Another important thing is that it uses standard copper for the uplink, so rollout is inexpensive.
      • Yeah but it's lame in the sense that they are eventually (very soon) going to have to get a REAL cable plant installed. This is just wasting money on testing/installing technology that can let them sit on their asses for another couple of years. No ISP should be providing DSL unless they have fibre connecting to the DSLAMs. OC3/12/etc is expensive, but GigE is cheap. Telstra, get on the ball, get some GigE DSLAMs and provide your customers with real service.
  • Does anyone have more info on this technology? As a resident of a rural area, my only broadband option is satellite. If DSL were a possibility for me via this new technology, it would really be great.

    • Re:More info? (Score:4, Informative)

      by arrow ( 9545 ) <mike.damm@com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:56AM (#13348140) Homepage Journal
      What this amounts to is moving the DSLAM from the central office to the pole outside your house, then wiring one or more T1/E1 lines to it.

      No magic "sprinkle this on your phone line and wait 10 minutes" here.

      There is nothing stopping you from deploying "this technology" for yourself today. Except maybe sticker shock. You'll shell out $500+/mo for the T1 line (since you don't already own the lines, like the Telco does), a couple grand for a DSLAM, and ~$100/mo in fees for dry pairs (assuming they even let you order them anymore) to your neghbors houses if you want to be nice and share.

      • There is nothing stopping you from deploying "this technology" for yourself today

        Apart from Telstra in Austalia that own the lines.

        for the T1 line

        Can't get it.

        in fees for dry pairs

        Can't get them - this almost monopoly keeps a tight control on what they have. You get it from them or you get it from a third party that originally got it from them after going through the amount of red tape and lack of care that only government run corporations that have a monopoly can provide.

    • You may want to look into Speakeasy's NetShare service [speakeasy.net], if it's available in your area.

      Basically, you get a T1 line (Free install + Free Router after $500 MIR) and split it with your neighbors wirelessly. You become the admin and set the price and speed for your neighbors, while Speakeasy handles the billing and credits you 80% of what your neighbors pay.

      It's $460/month for a 1.5Mbps symmetrical connection, and you'd have to split that down to what you consider affordable -- but hell, anything beats di
    • adtran has a 24-DSL box about the size of a blade... drive with up to 8 T1 lines, fed with power pairs off the span. you rack up 8 CO repeaters, dedicate one binder of copper, and you're there as far as you want to run t1 repeaters. it's in its second year of use with thousands running.. telestra's vendor got it a third smaller by putting a third of the horses under the hood.
  • USA to AUS, Hey, can we get in on this 20-km DSL thing? Man, I'm jealous!

  • always a trial (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
    As a Verizon customer all during the DSL revolution, neither the house I had nor the apartments I'm in now are dsl'able. Both are within 2 miles of a CO but for some reason they don't offer it. I'd sure like to sign up for more reliable / commercial level (run my own web / email / streaming audio / etc ) than what I have with consumer cable, which costs $70 / month, incl. tv which I rarely watch.

    • My Mom can't either. She lives on a rural road with old equipment. Telco doesn't have a cost benefit for replacing it. She's well within her distance requirements, though.
    • the cable company and dsl companies don't want to compete with each other. they pretty much split up territory. where dsl is available, often cable modems are not available. and where cable modems are available, dsl is not. this is not 100% true, but i would bet it is 80%+ true.

      it costs a lot of money to set up the equipment to deliver broadband (cable or dsl). neither company wants to invest a lot of money in a market where the other is. they rather saturate the market they currently have.

      i want dsl to

      • Dude....call your local gov't and complain. it works.

        Here in Fairfax, VA, when the local cable (Media General) wanted to increase rates...the local gov looked at the massive stack of complaints and said...um..sure, right after you solve all these other problems for your current promised service.

        So make sure you aren't just whining on /. do it someplace that actually makes a difference ;-)


        • Dude....call your local gov't and complain. it works.

          Here in Fairfax, VA, when the local cable (Media General) wanted to increase rates...the local gov looked at the massive stack of complaints and said...um..sure, right after you solve all these other problems for your current promised service.

          So make sure you aren't just whining on /. do it someplace that actually makes a difference ;-)

          Who do you complain to? Local city hall? What can they do? I thought only the FCC can do anything?

          I can give

          • If you have problems with cable, it's a good idea to remove any splitters and stuff in the line and replace them with good-quality ones. I had this same problem, and found out that my house had like 3 splitters before the cable modem jack. By the time the signal got there, it was severely degraded.
        • I lived in Fairfax County when it was under the sway of Media General, then moved away for a few years, then moved back (at this point it was under Cox, which from what I've heard has the same reputation that MG had), then moved away again.

          Since you're more familiar with the area than I am (making an assumption, possibly a wrong one, here), you might be able to answer this. Did MG simply go through a name change to become Cox, was their license revoked by the county, or did they simply merge/get bought b
    • It's the "load coils" for me. Cable is my only option at the moment.
  • "You can't fake what you havent got." -- Seymour Cray Seymour was referring to virtual memory, but the same applies to copper wires. They're probably relying on the statistical nature of communications: i.e. not everybody hits the "Next Blonde Bimbette" button at the same time. The basic wire to the central office (funny, ours is on "Central Avenue") is likely no speedier than before. it's just getting used more efficiently.
    • (A)DSL is very susceptible to signal loss. As the distance between they two endpoints increases, the amount of bandwidth decreases. Fortunately, since you are dealing with digital data you can just do the analogue to digital conversion somewhere along the line, and then turn it back into analogue for the next hop. The result? Instantly you have double the range you had before. It's not exactly hard, it just means that the local hop is in fact two hops (you to the repeater, then the repeater to the exch
      • Ah, we have something like a bootstapping problem here. AFAIK one never sends raw digital levels through copper, at least not for more than a few feet. The digital data gets converted to analog whistles schreeches and moans, the better to make it through miles of twisted pairs. What you might be meaning to say is the DSL signals can be re-encoded into some more distance-worthy analog jumble, to be decoded at the other end. I assume there's been a little progress in modems since DSL was nailed down.
        • No. There is no such thing as "raw digital signals through copper"

          Copper is a real world phenomenon and is therfore analog. We encode digital data into voltages and waveforms sent through the copper.

          lets say the limit of 100 mbit ethernet over cat5 cable is 100m, after that point the analog signal has degraded to the point that we cannot for instance tell a 1v signal from a 5v signal.

          But, you've got to go 200m!!!

          Run 100m of cable. Plug the cable into an old 486.

          You are only going 100m so you are still wi
          • " No. There is no such thing as "raw digital signals through copper"" By "raw digital" I meant the standard signal levels between your typical IC's. one example is the old parallel printer port, which does a bit of a no-no in using a standard TTL 74LS394 to drive the cable. Not a super idea, generally when you go off-board one should use a driver chip better suited to wotking with the real world, where wires get crossed, shorted, or zapped by static. Now that I re-read the comment I see they adumbrated

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by papasui ( 567265 )
    2.3 mbit shared by 8 people. I hope they're cheap coz they sure aren't impressive.
    • Oi, thats at least 287kbps for each which is more than my current 256kbps at 40US$ month you insnsitive clod! :)

  • Perhaps too late to be important (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mostly a lurker ( 634878 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:39AM (#13348016)
    If this technology had been available even five years ago, it would have been widely used. Now, I question whether it is going to be an economic solution. Recent advances in wireless technologies seem to promise a cheaper service in remote areas while being able to provide similar bandwidth.

  • I was impressed (Score:4, Funny)

    by dfn5 ( 524972 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @11:43AM (#13348044) Journal
    Until I converted to miles.

  • *ahem* "Ruggedized" (Score:3, Funny)

    by IorDMUX ( 870522 ) <mark DOT zimmerman3 AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday August 18, 2005 @12:29PM (#13348395) Homepage
    I've been seeing this word quite often in datasheets of chips we use in the lab. (Like here [irf.com], in the Description.) My first impression was a small, black IC with a confederate flag painted on top... perhaps some unnecessary facial hair, as well.

    Now, the word 'rugged' comes from the Scadanavian word for 'shaggy'. However, the popular cowboy mentality has managed to transform 'unkempt' into 'robust', as evidenced by the definition for 'ruggedize':
    --to strengthen (as a machine) for better resistance to wear, stress, and abuse--

    I'm going to assume, then, that my chip contains a powerful Texan spirit that herds the current like the stampeding mass of electrons that it is.
  • I'd be happy if my local telco would extricate its cranium from its anus and get some Internet going through all the Fiber we have going to my brand new neighborhood instead of just letting it sit dim with only phone service going through it . All our friggin house are wired with Cat5 for crying out loud and there is not ONE option for internet here from the telco besides dial-up . Nice waste of money ! OH and we are close to the offic so we would all be DSL ready except they CAN'T do DSL over fiber . SO I'
    • We were just installing phone lines (I work for a telco) at a new neighbourhood which is relatively upper class (beside a golf course). We were going to run Fibre-to-the-home (FTTH). The neighbourhood is only about 1km from our CO, so it wouldn't cost too much. The developers said they didn't want any fibre pedestals installed, so we ended up having to run copper. They can still get DSL at decent speeds, so it's not a big deal, but I had to shake my head at those developers. They didn't want to see

  • Completely misleading press release (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mike_lynn ( 463952 ) on Thursday August 18, 2005 @02:03PM (#13349339)
    If you read the wording of the press release, it says that people can get access to DSL "up to 20KM from a central exchange". Key words: central exchange.

    When most people in the US run into a distance limit, it's the 5200m/~3 mile distance from *the nearest DSLAM*, not the central exchange. So when people read this press release, they think: "Wow, now DSL goes 15km farther!"

    This is an unspoken lie. The Wikipedia entry their own press release links to lists a distance limit of 3km to the premises and further digging turns up G.SHDSL can be deployed up to about 12km from the central exchange ... or nearest fiber tie-in.

    Grand total: 15km.

    *Apparent* improvement: 10km ... but people forget that their local DSLAMs are already some considerable distance away from their own central offices.

    Working for an ISP has its advantages ... I just ran a distance check between a remote I know of and the central office it's deployed out of: 11km.

    So total distance from central office where I am that people can get DSL: Around 16km

    Distance Telstra should be getting using the technology they're talking about: 15km / roughly the same.

    Distance Telstra claims: 20km

    I don't know where that last 5km is coming from, but I bet it's because in this 'longest run' they've got fiber in there somewhere. If fiber isn't being used, I would _really_ like to see some specs on the data rate they get out of that 20km run.

    The only advantage to this technology is that it can be deployed using an unused copper pair, which is already installed everywhere that anyone would want DSL.
    • This 3km limit is a load of cobbliers. The vast majority of lines will work just fine out to 7-8km, and some much further.

      Last year BT did a large in the field trial of "extended reach" ADSL. Basically they hooked any line, no matter what the distance to the DSLAM and let the customer hook up their modem and saw what happened.

      In most cases it just worked, and in the cases where it did not work, a visit from an engineer to fit a ADSL filter at the NTE5 (the master socket in the house) and the vast majority s
    • Working for an ISP has its advantages ... I just ran a distance check between a remote I know of and the central office it's deployed out of: 11km.

      www.telcodata.us [telcodata.us]
  • It sounds like Telstras cable plant is pretty shoddy. We have remote DSLAMS near the customers so that we can give them great speeds. Soon, we will be putting a bunch more in so that everyone can get ADSL2+. This crap that Telstra is using sounds like a massive cop-out. It's not going to last very long if you have 2+ (max 8!) users sharing 2.3MBit. You also have to remember, these are people that have been ITCHING to get highspeed because it has been unavailable for so long. When they get it, the
    • who pays for 20kms of fibre?? who pays for the survey work? The problem for Rural Oz is not getting Broadband, it's getting Broadband at city prices. There are many solution for providing hi-speed data, few of them are cheap enought to supply a few customers 20-30kms from the nearest town.
  • Our phone company here's on strike. I discovered from various DSL resellers that I need basic phone service to have a DSL line. Basic service from Telus is $29.99 /mo + DSL $29.99

    So I got cable and voip. Cable: $37.99 /mo; voip: $15/mo... $11 if I buy their hardware.

    Oh, and no installation charges for voip. Telus wanted $100.

    I'm still $7/mo + $100 ahead. DSL blows, at least in my area.

    Plus, Shaw cable doesn't block inbound port 80 and 21 like DSL does.

    I'm on a rant. This is OT. Moderators will da
  • www.extel.com.au

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