Increasing availability of broadband access over copper network infrastructure

Currently dominant technology for the realization of broadband access over copper twisted pairs is Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology. Although the optical fiber provides significantly higher speeds than copper, it is anticipated that copper will remain in use for at least some time and will have in the coming years an important impact on further development and penetration of broadband services. A significant spread of copper access infrastructure and the application of DSL technology offers great opportunities for the provision of quality broadband services to a large number of end users, with a minimum required investment. Since complete replacement of the existing access infrastructure with optical fibers requires significant investment, it is still worth to invest in the development of equipment that uses copper infrastructure. Therefore it is imperative that DSL technology is optimized to improve its efficiency and ensure the required Quality of Service (QoS) for different types of multimedia services thus remaining competitive with other broadband access technologies.