New technology allows copper wire to handle 825Mbps data speeds

Galen

http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/new-technology-allows-copper-wire-to-handle-825mbps-data-speeds-20101026

Network providers face a never-ending battle to keep up with demand from users for bandwidth while at the same time increasing the speed of their overall networks. One of the major limiting factors is that many networks still rely on copper wire rather than the superior fiber optic cabling. The [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]networks[/COLOR][/COLOR] therefore have to choose when to make the very expensive [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]upgrade[/COLOR][/COLOR] to fiber optic, and where those upgrades should happen first.
Thanks to some new technological breakthroughs, however, copper wire may be making a comeback. Current download speeds offered to end users range from 2Mbps-50Mbps, but we are all looking towards 100Mbps as the next milestone. While you may think fiber optic would be required for that, Nokia Siemens Networks has managed to employ phantom circuits to boost data-carrying capacity over copper wire to as much as 825Mbps over short distances of around 400 meters.
While the tech that achieved such high speeds may be a few years away, Ikanos has unveiled its NodeScale Vectoring [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]technology[/COLOR][/COLOR]
allowing a minimum of 100Mbps data speeds over the same wires. It works by eliminating crosstalk on existing cabling allowing for much higher [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]performance[/COLOR][/COLOR].
NodeScale will allow the networks some breathing space and some cost savings too. Its deployment is thought to cost a tenth of what laying fiber costs. Ikanos will be demonstrating NodeScale Vectoring at ZTE Corporation’s booth at the Broadband World Forum 2010 being held over the next two days in Paris.
Read more at GIGAOM and the Ikanos press release
Matthew’s Opinion
Digging and laying new cable is always going to cost a lot more than employing a new technology with existing installations. It’s also much slower meaning more pressure is put on an existing network while a section of it remains offline. Upgrading tech may take hours or days, laying cable takes weeks or months.
It seems inevitable that copper wire will have to be replaced eventually, but any breakthrough that allows that cabling to continue to be used helps. We do all rely on the network operators to think ahead, though and invest in their networks. NodeScale Vectoring should therefore be used as a stop-gap solution while new cabling projects continue to be carried out.
As end users we really don’t care about what cables are being used. All we want is a connection that performs at the desired and advertised speed.

watty

I have 1Gbps on copper wires for ages...

This is just development, not revolutionary...

How many pairs do they need?
I've used phantom circuits and in the 1970s or earlier good copper pairs supported Ghosts and Spirits too.

Take two balanced circuits. You can get a third for free, a phantom by driving the virtual earth of the two circuits. So if you can balance well enough and have suitable matching you get 200Mbps VDSL2 on each circuit and 200Mbps on the phantom. That's 600Mbps on two pairs. You use "bonded Modems" or DSL bonding to treat the 3 streams as one 600Mbps. You get a "free" phantom 200Mbps.

So they are bonding two pairs and getting about 600Mbps instead of 2 x 300Mbps = 400Mbps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL2

From the 1950s to around the 1980s, using phantoms on star-quad trunk carrier circuits was a popular method of deriving a high quality broadcast audio circuit. The multiplexed FDM telecommucications carrier system usually did not use the baseband of the cable because it was inconvenient to separate low frequencies with filters. On the other hand, a one-way audio phantom could be formed from the two pairs (go and return signals) making up the star-quad cable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_circuit

Ghosts and Spirits? You need REALLY good balance, elimination of Crosstalk.
You take two phantoms...
Quality is rubbish...

Conculsions
The real world speed won't be 800Mbps.
It sounds like they "bond" two pairs (or maybe four like 1G Cat5e ethernet?) and then get a phantom circuit also per two pairs. If they are using four pairs and two phantoms then you might get close to 800Mbps at 400m. On a good day.
The "novel" aspect is however it is they (dynamically?) match the driving and termination of the pairs, probably a development of echo cancellation and crosstalk minimisation in VDSL2 and Gigabit Ethernet (which uses 4 pairs each running at 250Mbps bidirectionally at same time, and can work over 100m).
Phone wires are usually CAT3 cable.

watty

Slightly better, but still over simplistic, over hyped article

Adding more wires doesn't necessarily mean physically adding them to the home; many homes are equipped with multiple phone lines, and it's possible to bond two or more of these together to get increased bandwidth using existing DSL technology—a route that is already being taken by AT&T. Most of the new technology involves a combination of additional pairs and some improved noise correction. For example, the Hong Kong company Huawei is testing a system it calls SuperMIMO that involves a set of four twisted pairs, with noise correction that squeezes up to 175Mbps out of each pair, giving it a capacity of 700Mbps overall.

via http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/10/new-tech-may-bring-near-gigabit-speeds-via-dsl-someday.ars

All really only on xDSL used in Apartment Blocks or just the street via FTTC. Not really for xDSL from exchange.