The telecommunications masters at Bell Labs have managed to deliver a world record connection speed of 10Gbps (10,000Mbps) over copper wires. Dubbed XG.fast, the new technology could be used to massively extend the life of existing copper wireline networks, offering telecom companies an alternative to laying costly fiber-optic networks to billions of homes that already have a telephone line — but more importantly, it might mean you finally get a serious upgrade from your ~10Mbps ADSL or ~50Mbps VDSL connection.

Bell Labs, now an R&D division of global telecoms giant Alcatel-Lucent, developed XG.fast as an extension of G.fast. G.fast is the successor to VDSL2 — the technology that is used by most FTTC (fiber-to-the-cabinet) installations around the world. Paired with FTTC, VDSL2 offers speeds of up to 150Mbps, G.fast is up to around 1.25Gbps — and XG.fast is from 2Gbps all the way up to 10Gbps.

As always with new copper wire technologies, XG.fast’s massive speeds mostly stem from its use of a larger frequency range. While VDSL2 only uses a 17 or 30MHz block of spectrum, G.fast allows for up to 212MHz, and XG.fast uses a massive 500MHz. It’s pretty much the same thing as WiFi: You could only squeeze so much data into the small 20MHz channel available in the 2.4GHz band — but you can cram a whole lot more into the 80MHz and 160MHz channels available at 5GHz.

The problem with squeezing 500MHz over a copper wire, though, is that higher frequencies attenuate (weaken) very quickly. Couple this with crosstalk (interference from the other copper wire in the twisted pair) and your effective range becomes very short. For VDSL2, max wire length is around 400 meters if you want 150Mbps; for 1.25Gbps G.fast, max distance drops to just 70 meters. For 10Gbps XG.fast, Bell Labs is reporting a max distance of just 30 meters (100 feet). For the slower version of XG.fast, clocked at 1Gbps symmetrical (2Gbps total), the researchers managed a range of 70 meters (230 feet).

Still, 100 feet is a lot better than the alternative of running fiber into someone’s home (FTTH). The amount of time, effort, and money required to run new fiber cables inside billions of homes is almost impossibly daunting. If there’s already a copper pair running into most homes around the world, why not use them? [Read: World’s fastest wireless network hits 100 gigabits per second, can scale to terabits.]

Don’t expect a 10Gbps/10,000Mbps connection any time soon, however. Further advances to FTTC and VDSL2, and then G.fast — which is in the process of being ratified by the ITU — are the next steps that will be rolled out by ISPs over the next few years. G.fast and its promise of 1Gbps will require running fiber a bit closer to the home — probably FTTdp (distribution point; either under the sidewalk, or up a pole) — and will thus cost a significant amount of capital expenditure. XG.fast will almost certainly require FTTB (fiber to the basement), though FTTdp may be possible in some situations. [Read: The secret world of submarine cables.]

Ultimately, though, these are all just stopgaps. By far the best solution is to run fiber to everyone’s home right now. Sure it would cost billions or trillions of dollars, but ISPs should think big and future-proof themselves now, rather than constantly scrabbling to keep up with piecemeal patches and updates. Sadly, unless there’s a massive grant from the government, that’s rarely how things are done in this world.

[Image credit: Element Collection]