Fibre-optic cable is being laid at great expense across the UK to speed up people’s internet connections, but researchers claim that copper telephone wire already in use across the country can achieve data rates three times higher than currently seen at a fraction of the price, at least over short distances.
Their method for increasing speeds may help to ease the transition to nationwide fibre optic networks, and it may also be useful in countries that use similar twisted-pair copper wire.
According to Ergin Dinc of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues, twisted pairs of copper wire, the type used for decades as telephone lines and now repurposed for broadband internet, can support a frequency five times higher than is currently used, significantly improving data transmission rates.
Above that threshold, the researchers discovered that the wire basically works as an antenna, converting any signal transmitted down it into radio waves that dissipate before reaching their target.
“These wires are actually quite ancient, developed by Alexander Graham Bell, and no one has looked into the theoretical limitations since then,” Dinc explains.
According to him and his colleagues, these discoveries may allow homes near fiber-optic connections to attain faster speeds than they presently have without incurring the expenditure of extending fibre all the way to their home.
Fibre-optic cables contain photon groups that represent data, and a large number of these photon groups may be delivered over the line one after the other without waiting for the first to arrive.
Today’s fibre connections generally function at 1 gigabit per second, although theoretical speeds might be hundreds of times faster.
However, in copper wire, the signal is sent by an electrical current that runs the length of the cable, and the data transmission rate is limited by how rapidly the current can be adjusted.
Existing copper broadband connections work at a frequency below 1 gigahertz, where the current is adjusted a billion times per second, but the researchers discovered that this may potentially be increased to 5 gigahertz using a simple and inexpensive component called a balun.
To read our blog on “Amazon secures rockets for broadband project Kuiper” click here
