As the national broadband networks struggles to deliver 100Mbps over a planned $43 billion dollar fibre network, Alcatel-Lucent has announced that its research arm, Bell Labs, has successfully demonstrated downstream VDSL2 speeds of up to 300Mbps over distances of up to 400 meters using DSL Phantom Mode technology over a copper wire network, similar to what Telstra has connected to most homes and businesses in Australia.

This breakthrough will be an additional tool in the arsenal of providers looking to boost bandwidth capacity with existing copper assets. However, we are unlikely to see commercial deployments until at least 2012. In the interim, bonding, vectoring, and other technical developments are likely to extend the life of DSL, which is good news for both DSL vendors and consumers.
 
Kamalini Ganguly, Analyst at Ovum said,  “The timeline for the benefits of these DSL developments to reach the market remains a challenge. Bonding trials were held by Alcatel-Lucent in November 2009 and vectoring field trials are scheduled later this year. We may see commercial deployments of these two technologies in the next couple of years”.