DailyDirt: Speedy Connections In The Future
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Who doesn't like a fast broadband connection? The faster, the better! The only problem seems to be that there are some capacity limits with current technology. Details, details. But what if there were some technologies that could vastly increase those capacity limits? There might be some awkward situations where fiber-based internet service wasn't as fast as a wireless connection. Perhaps ingrained data cap pricing tiers would still stick around? Here are just a few developments that could bring much faster broadband (someday, maybe).- Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs set a broadband record of 10 Gbps over traditional copper telephone lines in 2014. There are some practical limitation, such as the distance couldn't be too far and the copper line quality probably needs to be a bit better than the 100yo stuff running into some homes. Still, the work is pushing the limits of copper further, and there are some predictions that 40 Gbps speeds over copper are on the way. [url]
- Researchers at Columbia University have created full-duplex radio integrated circuits that could effectively double frequency spectrum resources. Devices made with this technology could transmit and receive data over the same frequency at the same time, but obviously this capability is going to take some time to get into commercial gadgets. [url]
- The orbital angular momentum (OAM) property of electromagnetic waves could provide nearly limitless data capacity. It might take a really, really long time to see this get out of the lab and into commercial products, but when/if it does, we might never hear about exoflood FUD again. [url]
Filed Under: bell labs, broadband, copper, data cap, exaflood, fiber, oam, orbital angular momentum, wireless
