The broadband revolution is finally taking hold.
But as asymmetric DSL emerges as the leading high-speed connection technology in North America, a newer -- much faster -- flavor of DSL is sweeping Asia.
Very high data rate DSL, known as VDSL, was originally developed to carry digital television signals in addition to standard Internet traffic, so it can pump data over a standard copper telephone wire at speeds up to 25 megabits per second. ADSL signals max out at 8 Mbps -- although most ADSL services average about 1.5 Mbps.
However, ADSL has a range advantage because the data signals can travel up to 5 kilometers from the telephone switching station over standard copper phone wires. VDSL traffic is limited to 1 kilometer.
That makes VDSL ideal for very dense urban areas, where the consumer is located close to the switching station, which is why many in the industry see Asia as the hottest market for the technology.
"Korea is ahead right now, but soon China will be the world leader," said Steven Haas, director of Ethernet access product marketing for Infineon Technologies, one of the early suppliers of VDSL components. "One big city in China can overtake almost all of the deployment in Korea. It's just taking a little big longer to get the Chinese dragon going."
Infineon and its system partners are currently supplying VDSL gear to several Chinese telecom vendors. Haas forecasts over a million VDSL lines in operation in China by the end of this year, and said he expects to see another 2 million new lines by 2003.
One of the main reasons for this impressive growth rate is China's underdeveloped phone system.
Pat Hurley, DSL analyst for market research firm TeleChoice, says China is making a big push to upgrade its telecommunications infrastructure. Carriers in the rest of the world push ADSL connections that work on existing copper phone lines, but China lacks basic copper wiring in many of its major markets.
To upgrade the country's technology, Hurley says the Chinese are bypassing copper wiring and laying fiber optic lines instead. Bringing fiber connections to within a kilometer of users' homes and businesses solves the problem of VDSL's shorter range.
And while demand for that much bandwidth may be limited now, China wants to future-proof its network by building in enough capacity to support data-intensive applications like digital television and online gaming.
"China is attempting (to) leapfrog their technology and skip over ADSL," said Hurley. "They are moving from what the United States looked like 30 years ago directly to what the U.S. will look like in another five years."
Despite its promise in Asia, VDSL occasions little notice in the United States.
SBC Communications has launched trials of the technology, and Qwest Communications is market-testing it with 50,000 subscribers connected to VDSL in Phoenix, Denver and Boulder, Colorado. Qwest's test customers account for about half of all American VDSL lines.
All the factors that make VDSL appealing in Asia work against it in the United States: Few users live within a kilometer of the central telephone office, and only the newest housing developments have fiber-optic links.
"There are technical barriers for deploying any type of DSL, and VDSL has the additional barrier of a limited range," said Matthew Davis, director of broadband access technologies at market research firm The Yankee Group. "VDSL is definitely in the nascent stage in this country."
